How To Choose A Web Hosting Company

By Wyatt Galt, 22 Jan 23:16

You need a place for your Website to live. It will live on a computer called a server. A server is typically a personal computer or a larger computer with a fast processor and a good size hard drive. The server is specifically configured to contain your Website and deliver pages to visitor’s browsers when called upon.

If you are just starting out, have a large company host your Website so you can concentrate on your business and not get bogged down in technical problems. If you use a hosting company, you will not need your own server.

Using a hosting company is commonly referred to as “virtual hosting”.

ISP stands for Internet Service Provider
An ISP provides connections to the Internet via dial up accounts or high speed dedicated lines such as a DSL line (Digital Subscriber Line). Some ISPs will host your Website as well. Other companies do not provide Internet access but will host your site. Do not confuse the two. You do not have to have your ISP host your site.

First, I think you should know the criteria to make a wise decision concerning the hosting of your Website.

Here are the criteria:
1. National
Start with a large national Web hosting company that offers peering and mirroring. Hosts with peering (multi-homing) have more than one high-speed backbone to speed the delivery of your site so that if one backbone is down, the site still gets delivered via one of the other backbones.

A host that “mirrors” your site on several servers at different locations also acts as a back-up. This will also improve speed from coast to coast and internationally.

2. 24/7 Support
Make sure they offer 24x7x365 support -- 24 hours/day, 7 days a week and 365 days per year with real people on the phone to help you without cost. You can test them by E-mailing them a question or phoning them and see how long their response takes and how helpful it is.

3. Always running
They must ensure your site will always be up. If you use a local company that has only a few servers, you are looking for nothing but trouble.

4. Fast
You must have a very fast connection speed. The host must have “large pipes” connecting to the Internet. A T1 line is not adequate. You want a T3 or OC3. Ask the hosting company about their pipes and they will give you a description of what they use.

5. Virtual hosting your domain
They must to able to host your domain with you as the administrative contact. It is OK for them to be listed as the technical contact.

6. E-mail
They should offer at least 5 E-mail POP accounts so you can start to create departmental E-mail like sales@yourcompany.com.

7. Autoresponders
When you really get rolling you will want to use autoresponders. These are programs that will automatically answer certain inquiries and E-mail from your customers. Ask the hosting company if they support them and will provide them to you. Sometimes they will charge you for them. (See The Autoresponder lesson in our Internet marketing course)

8. Secure Server
You should process online credit card transactions through a secure server so the credit card numbers are encrypted. Request SSL. SSL is a Netscape invention and is a secure technology protecting the use of credit cards online. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet using a program layer between HTTP and TCP layers.

9. Real Time Verification
You will want the credit cards to be cleared immediately, in real time. The host should offer real-time verification and authorization in conjunction with a gateway company like VeriSign or others.

10. Site Size and Transfer Volume
An active business takes up space on the server’s hard drive and also transfers data as visitors access the site. A healthy hosting package will give you 5 gigabytes per month of data transfer and 100 megabytes of space on their server. You can start smaller than this and move up to this package. You can find this package for around $50 per month or less.

11. Log Files
You must be able to access all the log files of your site. (See the Log Analysis Lesson later in the course)

12. FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) This is the protocol used on the Internet for sending files. You must be able to manage and modify your site with no limit to the number of site updates or to the times of access via FTP transfer. This is a fast way to back up your site on a virtual host as well.

13. CGI Scripts
(Common Gateway Interface) This is a method by which servers receive, process and transmit data. The result is sent to the user’s browser. CGI is cross-platform, cross-browser compatible which means it is accepted just about everywhere on the Internet.

The CGI program resides on your Web host’s server and there is virtually no limit to the functions that can be in a CGI program. A common use of CGI is to take the data that your visitor has entered into a form, process it, and then send it to you. An example of this is a newsletter request. The host must allow you to run your own custom CGI scripts.

14. Shopping Cart Software
To enable eCommerce on your site you will need some type of method for processing orders online. Most large hosting companies offer a basic solution for this.

15. FrontPage Extensions
Microsoft has started to dominate HTML editing software as with its HTML editor, FrontPage. Many hosts offer FrontPage extensions so you can edit the site online using the program.

15. Ruby on Rails and PHP add-ons and support

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Tags: web hosting