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Making the right choice when choosing
a web hosting company is crucial to
the success of your
site. Make the
wrong choice and you'll have to suffer
through unacceptable
periods downtime
and slow
server transfer speeds.
You can have the most professional looking web site on the net, but if
the quality of your web hosting company is less than what it should be your site may be slow to
load and down altogether for extended periods of time. In short, take care and do your homework
before you decide on a web hosting company.
The first thing to consider above all else is the speed of the web host's server connection to
the internet. The internet connection should be dual T3's at a minimum. Anything less than that
will cause your site to bog down during peak traffic hours. Don't consider a
web hosting company that offers
less regardless of how low the price is.
Next you need to consider the server hardware itself. State of the art in the computer industry
changes rapidly, but you should only consider a web hosting company that uses the latest
equipment with plenty of memory to ensure fast server response at peak times.
To be considered, a potential web hosting company should offer these features as a bare minimum:
- Uptime guarantee - Anything less than 99.5% is simply unacceptable for a quality web host
- Storage - 1 GB to allow for expansion as your site grows (and it will)
- Bandwidth - 50 GB per month. Some web hosting companies advertise unlimited bandwidth.
You should know that there is no such thing. There's always a bandwidth limit that is known only by
the web host. Exceed that limit and they'll cancel your account in a heartbeat. It's much better to know what the limit is up front.
You should also expect to have the following features available at no extra charge even if you
don't need them
right now. Sooner or later you will.
- SQL database support
- PHP support
- Server side includes
- Access to your raw traffic logs
- Password protected directories
- Daily backups
- Other miscellaneous features that may be required for your particular site
- A money back guarantee
RLROUSE.COM uses HostGator
for our web host and we have been extremely pleased with their performance and
turn around time on technical support requests (usually less than 1 hour!). I
highly recommend them if you're looking for the best value in price, features,
and speed in your web host.
Take care and do your homework in choosing a web hosting company and you can rest assured that your host
will be able to accommodate your site as it grows.
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