How To Choose The Best Web Hosting For Your Needs - 8 Types Of Hosting Explained - Part 2

How confusing do you find it when you are considering the right web host?  Here are some factors you will want to take into account when choosing your web host.  This article is in 2 parts.  Today this article will look at storage space and data transfer, reliability and technical support.  Come back for more tomorrow.  Leave a message below to let me know how useful you find this article.

Choosing The Right Web Host - The Hardest Customer Task To Solve – Part 1

By: Richard Clement

Can we take this whole internet thing one step further and host our site ourselves on our own PC? Well, the basic answer is no! If you need to get a site live quickly or cheaply, it can be nearly impossible to do it yourself. Outsourcing these tasks to professional web host prividers that will save you money and headaches. The company will lodge your site on a web server, make the necessary connections between your domain name and their server configurations and then you're up and running. Your site is out there on the internet for all to see . But there are so many web hosts. How can somebody choose between them?

Different companies offer different plans, features, transfer rates and support levels, so how can you choose what's right for you?

The problem is that there are so many, and to some shoppers, there is a lot of technical jargon that can get in the way of picking the right one. This article is meant to simplify matters a bit by giving a reasonable way to estimate a web host's value.

The first thing to be done is to decide what you need your page to do.Is this you personal site, business site or some organization's site. Do you think selling things on your site, or maybe managing a forum , do you need a hit counter ect. These are just some of the questions you need to answer yourself before even starting to choose.

There are more factors in what will determine the best hosting provider for you and that will be the primary goal of this artcle.

First thing to consider: Storage Space and Data Transfer

A small information site or personal site will usually only require a few megabytes of disk space, however, data transfer depends on the size of the pages your are offering your visitors multiplied by the number of visitors. Therefore, a popular and graphics heavy website requires a greater monthly transfer than a text site. You should look at a minimum of 2 GB (2000 MB) data transfer a month. Check with the company that they can upgrade your account if your site increases it's need for storage or monthly data transfer. Prepare for growth now so that you are not caught off guard by unexpected costs when you go to expand your services.

Second thing to consider: Reliability

For any online business, uptime is critical. You absolutely cannot go with a host that has an uptime of less than 95%.

No web host can have 100% uptime, and it's impossible to guarantee. Avoid any hosts promising more than they can deliver. Most claim 99.9% uptime, but due to the nature of computers and communications equipment, outages will and do occur occasionally. You can contact a company and ask, but they will tell you they're very reliable. Instead, ask for a couple of sites they currently host, that you can check out for yourself. The word of mouth is probably most powerful in helping to judge these companies.

Third thing to consider: Technical Support

Critical to success, you'll need an internet hosting company that can help you resolve problems quickly with the least possible disruption to your site activity. As most hosting companies offer inclusive technical support, you shouldn't pay extra for this. If you're not offered 24 hours/7 days you should look elsewhere. Most hosts have email support, but keep an eye out for hosts that have phone numbers listed. These are obviously more valuable. Though some hosts have excellent turn around on email service requests, there's no substitute for actually being able to talk to somebody if you need to. The test is to contact the company and ask questions. If they don't reply within 48 hours, or don't reply at all, consider another hosting company. A good company should reply within 24-48 hours.

Author Bio

Richard Clement is an online publisher dedicated in helping online users in various categories. He is an online marketing specialist and owner of ItStandard.Net hosting company. For more info visit his site http://www.itstandard.net

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Source: By Richard Clement

What Is Web Hosting? Explained Simply | GoDaddy

Are you looking for a web hosting provider and wondering what you should be considering?  Does it seem confusing with all the different features they all seem to offer?  If you read this article it may not seem as confusing as it first appears.  Here are 7 basic features that Carl Madison describes as the most important features in his article.  Read on and leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Web Hosting Features

By: Carl Madison

Finding a Web hosting provider seems like a difficult job. You think you've found a provider, but then another one offers some Web hosting features a little different than the first provider. So you have to decide what to do. Many of the features you won't even use. A Web host provider will add alot of features to your package to make it enticing. Instead of talking about all the features, I will discuss which ones are important. If you have a simple website, you can combine these features with a cheap web hosting package and be okay. Below are the most important features.

1. Disk Space

One of the biggest concerns you may have is how much disk space(also disk storage or web space) you may need. It all depends on how your website is created. First, let me tell you that Web host providers will show you disk space they provide you in either GB(gigabyte) or MB(megabyte). 1 GB equals 1024 MBs. A website with text only can get by with about 20 megabytes. However, if you add graphics and videos, you will need more disk space. The more things you add to your website, the more disk space you will need.

2. Bandwidth

Bandwidth(or data transfer) is the amount of information your website can deliver to visitors that surf your site. When someone surfs your website or downloads anything from your site, they are using bandwidth. A Web hosting provider usually gives you a month to month supply of bandwidth. If you are planning on having a website with few visitors, then the minimum bandwidth allowed by your provider(between 1GB and 5GBs) should be enough. 

Here is some information you need to know when you are calculating bandwidth: 

1024 Byte = 1 Kilobyte (KB); 1024 Kilobyte(KB) = 1 Megabyte(MB) ; 1024 Megabyte = 1 Gigabyte(GB) 

Note: Some Web host providers don't calculate bytes in 1024's. They instead use 1000 to make it easier. This is something to remember if your calculations are a little different than the providers. You should ask your provider if you want to know which number they use.

3. FTP 

FTP(File Transfer Protocol) is a method of transferring files from one computer to another. This gives you the ability to upload your website to your Web hosting provider. In addition, it makes life easier because you can copy lots of files at one time. 

4. Customer Service

Technical Support is very important. You should find a company that gives you 24/7 customer service. You may have some issues with your website that need to get taken care of right away. The longer the wait, the more potential visitors to your website you could be losing.

5. Email Services

You definitely want to have email access so you won't have to give your personal email address to visitors of your website. You should get a few email addresses to use for different reasons.

6. Site Statistics

Site Statistics are important because you can keep track of how many people are visiting your website. Therefore, you can know how well your site is doing. In addition, you will be able to determine how much bandwidth is being used.

7. Reliability

If you find a cheap web hosting plan, it doesn't mean you can't rely on them. Furthermore, you should have a provider you can count on to keep your website up and running. Most web host can guarantee your site will be up and running 99.9% of the time. If you come across a web host that guarantees less uptime, I wouldn't recommend you use their services.

Conclusion

These seven features, in my opinion, are features you should have for a basic website. Now if you are planning on doing more than putting basic information on your site, then you should look at other features that may pertain with what you are going to do. For example, if you're going to run programs on your website, then you will need to look into the different types of scripts(PHP, CGI, PERL, SSI, etc....). Another example is if you are doing business online then you want to have security on your site like SSL. As I said earlier, there are alot of features that come with your web host package, but most of them you won't need. If you need more than the seven listed above, chances are you already know what you need because you will have built your website around those features. These seven are for a person who wants to put a basic website together, with information about their business. Now all you need to do is find an affordable web hosting provider to go with these features and you are on your way.

Author Bio
Carl Madison is an established author for www.hostdata101.com

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Source: By Carl Madison

http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/web_hosting_articles/297-webhostingfeatu.htm