Choosing a Hosting Service: A Primer
by Maria
Marsala
Published on this site: February 7th, 2004
Are
you ready for a web site? Not sure what to look for? Use this article to help
you determine the best hosting company for your site.
Growth
Is
this a company you can grow with vs. having to change companies when you outgrow
the service?
Customer Service
Many people start with a lost cost
service, only to find that the only way to receive customer service is by email.
Choose
a company that offers you low cost services with a long distance phone number
for customer service. If you need a larger service, $20 a month +, they should
offer you a toll free customer service number.
Reliability
Do
they provide information about their server uptime/downtime (and possibly even
provide a guarantee)? Do they provide you with your own IP Address? (that's a
special number identification system for a web site, vs. the worded identification
most people are familiar with.)
Choices
The type of server you
will need depends on the programs you want to run for things like your shopping
cart, affiliate program, web site pages, etc. ASP, JSP, PHP, CGI, PL, CSS programs
will influence the choice of a server and visa versa. Your hosting service may
have windows (which for example accepts ASP but not PHP), Linux or nix-based (Apache/FreeBSD/etc.)
servers.
Email Accounts
How many Pop 3 accounts (Post Office Protocol)
do you want?
Basically, these are email accounts where both the to and from
accounts are your domain names. The other type, you don't want as a business owner
are "alias" accounts where the to account is your domain name, then
it's transferred to your ISP/DSL account. Outgoing mail does not include your
domain name account.
Security
If you want a shopping cart, make
sure that your site is secure, is encrypted and has the programming capacity that
allows you to produce a shopping cart, too.
Statistics
Does your
hosting companies plan include monthly and yearly statistics on each of your web
pages? Will you know how someone found each of your web pages?
Easy
Does
your hosting package include a simple to understand control panel? This is especially
important if you want to maintain your site or have someone else easily maintain
it.
It's one place to visit when making changes to your site, add addresses,
etc.
Protection
It is easy to password protect a page or area
of your web site? This is becoming more important as web owners develop client,
subscriber and note areas of their web sites.
Web Email Option
Can
you easily read your messages on line, when you travel, because it has a Web-based
Email system?
Pluses:
- Does it offer an ezine subscription service and if so,
will it accept both text and HTML?
- Does your hosting package include an easy to use web page
builder?
- Does it include a way for you to send your files to the
server?
- If you are building or having your site built with MS
Front Page, you want to make sure that the server accepts
Front Page pages.
- What are the hidden, one time only, set-up fees?
Special
thanks to my two favorite web design email lists www.WiseWomen.com
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HTML-on-the-WEB/
for assistance with this article.
© 2004 From Web Site Marketing Primer: 52 Things To REALLY Consider
Before You Create A Web Site, a new ebook by Maria Marsala, Business and
Life Coach-Trainer. Our mission is to teach, motivate and inspire others to live
their "best lives" while contribute to the world in wonderful ways.
Join our newsletter, Elevating Your Business at http://www.coachmaria.com.
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