Hosting your website the right way!

In this lesson im going explain the importance of quality website hosting rather than cheap website hosting!

Welcome back and i hope you’ve had a successful week in your online activities.

Today i want to quickly talk to you about website hosting, the place many website owners go horribly wrong!

I can’t stress enough the importance of getting the hosting right, first time around.

Imagine you setup a retail store in your local high street, you spend thousands on the products and fixtures and open your doors for the first day of trading.

DOOM! CRASH! BANG!

The ceiling falls down and the doors fall apart!

This might sound extreme but it happens all too often online, people try to cut corners with free and cheap website hosting and end up throwing away months of hard work becoming victim to hackers, poor quality hosting or companies going bust!

All this can AND SHOULD be avoid!

Your hosting account is the back bone of your business, don’t waste time with free or cheap hosting accounts.

A little extra can make a big difference.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A HOSTING ACCOUNT

In my early days i worked for a local hosting company for 2 years with general maintenance and customer support so what im going to recommend isn’t just any old rubbish, it really makes a difference.

My recommendations for picking a hosting company.

1. 24 Hour Customer Support

Trust me, if you visit a hosting companies website and they DO NOT OFFER 24 hours support, FORGET IT!

They might offer you the biggest, cheapest prices you could ever dream of, if they don’t offer support when you need it, your wasting your time and money.

2. Business Phone Number and Valid Mailing Address

Hosting companies are not always what they seem, a lot of hosting companies are really affiliates. They offer hosting packages from other companies and add their own mark-up on top.

What this means is that you could be buying your hosting services from the 16 year old next door!

Ring them, make sure its a real company, ask obvious questions, can you visit their office if needs be? Do they have a valid mailing address, can you send them checks rather than paying online?

3. Automatic Daily Backup’s

This is a must, don’t fool yourself in thinking your hosting account is never going to break. IT WILL and when it does you need to be prepared.

If your hosting company DOESNT OFFER daily backups, ditch them and quickly!

A good hosting company will also offer you help in retrieving lost data, make sure you ask them if they will help you with this JUST INCASE you need it.

4. Unlimited Everything!

Most of the big, professional hosting companies can offered to offer their customers more that’s why you should always look for unlimited everything!

This is what i look for;

Unlimited Web Storage
Unlimited Data Transfer
Host Unlimited Domains on 1 Account
Unlimited E-mail Accounts
Unlimited MySQL Databases

5 . Email Restrictions

This has to be number 3 for its also very import. MOST hosting company limit your email activity without you knowing. What this means if you send 50 or more emails in 1 hour the rest WILL NOT get delivered.

They get instantly deleted and you might never have known!

CHECK with your hosting provider BEFORE you buy what their hourly email restrictions are! Any less than 200 for a small website isn’t worth buying.

6. Admin Control Options – CPANEL not PLESK or anything else!

Make Sure you get an admin control panel with your hosting account, IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!

I wouldn’t recommended anything BUT cpanel. Why?

IT costs the hosting company money for you to use, its very well supported, has built in website analytics and allows instant setup of popular services such as wordpress, joomla, phpbb etc.

7. Linux Hosting NOT Windows

Unless your familiar with website hosting and/or your an ASP programmer, DONT go for windows hosting.

Its a night mere for anyone getting started, most software applications you will work with online are PHP based software which work BEST on linux. Examples, wordpress, Joomla, phpBB, Vbu;iten etc etc.. ALL PHP Applications.

8. Money Back Guarantee

ALL GOOD hosting companies OFFER a money back guarantee.

If your thinking of trying a hosting company that doesn’t, STOP before you get ripped off. They should at least offer a 30 day refund policy incase what they say they offer isn’t actually what you get.

9. SSL certificates

Make sure that the hosting company CAN provide an SSL certificate for your hosting INCASE you need it. It doesn’t mean your going to need it right away but the more you work online some things like SSL can be useful.

10. Free Site Migration

what this basically means is the hosting company will help people who are having problems with this existing hosting company MOVE.

This is a very positive sign that the company is geared towards HELPING YOU with your website rather than just taking your money!

Where can you find a quality website hosting company?

After years of searching the one hosting company i recommend and use myself is GreenGeek.

Visit their Website

http://shopperpress.com/book/hosting/

Until next week,

Mark Fail