The first thing before choosing a web hosting provider is that you should be fully aware of your hosting requirements. If you are a beginner wanting to host a personal web site, then your only concern is that you get a decent amount of disk space for your web site with a host that is as cheap as $5 per month. However, if you are a developer, an online entrepreneur or an online business looking for e-commerce capabilities or advanced scripting technologies, then you can determine your requirements in the following order.
(1) Whether you need Shared Hosting or Dedicated Hosting: This depends mainly on two major requirements, the traffic your web site is expected to receive and the degree of administrative privileges you need. If you expect your web site to receive huge amounts of traffic, then you will need to have a Dedicated Server which definitely has a much greater bandwidth offering. Also you should select Dedicated server hosting if your web site requires customized options, secure information or complex applications i.e. e-commerce, dynamic content, database and multimedia applications.
(2) Whether you need Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting: If you're going to use server technologies such as ASP, JSP etc or intend to run Microsoft applications like Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database on your server, then you should use a Windows hosting provider. Although ASP can be run on the Linux platform using some commercial applications, there are security and reliability concerns related to it. However, if you want to use ColdFusion, it can run on both Linux and Windows platforms.
(3) What are your Space and Bandwidth requirements: Many web hosting providers nowadays offer generous amounts of disk space from 1 GB to 3 GB. However, if your web site mainly acts as a download resource, then your disk space requirements may be 5 to 10 times greater than this. The second consideration is how much traffic your web site is expected to receive which will let you estimate your bandwidth requirements.
(4) How many Parked Domains and Subdomains do you need: Parked domains are very advantageous and can significantly increase the
amount of traffic to your web site. Similarly, subdomains can help with your search engine rankings by pointing to specific directories of your web site. Parked domains and subdomains occasionally come free with certain web hosting packages. However if you need more, you will have to pay an additional price per month.
(5) FTP Accounts and Anonymous FTP Requirements: You may need more than one FTP account if you have coworkers working on your web site project at different locations. The Anonymous FTP permits the general public to access certain directories on your web server to whom they have been granted permission by you. In most cases, you will need a dedicated IP address for Anonymous FTP to function.
(6) Whether you need e-commerce Features: If you need e-commerce features, you should choose a web hosting provider that provides e-commerce functionality such as shopping carts and the ability to accept credit cards. You should also check whether their server is SSL secure.
In addition to your own hosting requirements, the following considerations must be kept in mind when looking for a quality web hosting provider.
(1) More than 99.5% uptime: Choose a web hosting provider that has an uptime greater than 99.5% and if there is an uptime guarantee, it's even better. If your web site is for business purposes, it's very crucial that your site stays online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.
(2) Fast Servers: The level of connectivity of your web hosting provider to the Internet is very important. So you should choose a web hosting provider with at least a T3 connection to the major Internet backbone. Analysis has shown that the average web visitor waits for about 30 seconds before your web page loads. So if your web site takes more than 30 seconds to load, chances are that you will loose a lot of visitors and consequently sales.
(3) Server Backups: To make your data secure, your web hosting
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About the Author:
Dr. Jay B Stockman is a contributing editor for VisionUpdate.net, and a practicing doctor for New York Vision Associates, http://newyorkvisionassociates.com,
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