How To Choose Hosting Provider for Your Blog

You must have a hosting provider to have a website on the internet, beside have a domain name and already have a website script that ready to upload.  You have to be careful to choose hosting provider. If you choose the wrong hosting provider, your blog or website can’t operate optimally, so the possibility of your website or blog to have a good traffic is also getting smaller. This is because your hosting provider does not have a good uptime, also has a little support.

For the first time, I choose hosting provider are also seeing a lot of mistakes. At that time I choose a free hosting provider. Understandably in my brain, if there is a free, why should I use a paid hosting provider? But my decision to choose a free hosting has to redeem at a great price. In the first week, there have been no significant problems, but after one week my blog was not accessible. The Support can’t be contacted. Fortunately I have been backing up the database, so I don’t have to start from scratch.

With experience as above, then I decided to choose paid hosting provider. But that time, I only took attention to the cheapest hosting provider, without took attention to other factors. The result can be guessed, once again my blog also do not have a long life. My blog failed again to exist in the online world.

After seeing some of that experience, I finally tried to make some research. I am looking for as much information about how the best way in choosing hosting provider. I make some research from hosting forums and also from some pretty intense contact by several senior in the online world. Finally I can choose a good hosting provider and also at a reasonable price. It means not too expensive nor too cheap, but it have reliable quality.

If you want to create a blog or website and no purpose to monetize it, free web hosting is enough for you. You can select the most minimal package only, if you want to use paid one. If you want to create a blog that can be monetize or for online business, file sharing sites, video or image sharing then you have to choose paid hosting so that your blog or website more reliable.

I give the simplest and easiest tips to choose hosting provider, here they are:
1. Do research and find much information as possible as about the hosting providers on the hosting forums, ask friends and you can use Google also. Things to know to choose hosting provider are:
• Check the domain age of the hosting provider. Use “whois tools” such as http://www.whois.net or http://whois.domaintools.com. The older domain age is better.
• Check the Google page rank. Use tools such as page rank checker: http://www.prchecker.info or http://www.mypagerank.net. The bigger is better.
• Check the Alexa rank. Use tools from http://www.alexa.com through extensions or add on in your browser. The smaller is better.

2. Figured out the reliability, redundancy and scalability of hosting provider.
Reliability usually measured by the percentage of uptime. Find and select the web hosting providers with a minimum 99% uptime guarantee.

Redundancy means he alternative path to a network connection. Find and select the web hosting that has more than one connection to the network, so that when one got trouble, you will be redirected to alternative pathways. Your web server has to still alive and can be accessed from anywhere.

The scalability can be determined in the peak traffic volume. How good the hosting provider is able to handle the busy traffic. We should choose hosting provider that can provide availability even at peak traffic volume.

3. Figured out the devices used and the support provided by the hosting provider
• Identify the hardware
Choose hosting provider that has quality devices used and  it is designed for the needs of the server and it’s not just PCs that used as servers.
• Check for the support hours
Check if the hosting provider that you want to use has a good support service for 24 hours, so we can resolve the problems that confront us whenever we call.
• Check the technical support provided
Technical support from the web hosting provider must be experienced and can really help each of our problems. Therefore, before you choose hosting provider we should ask some questions about the technical and non-technical information about the hosting

• Calculate the response time.
You can try to ask you some questions about the technical and non-technical, so you can calculate how long the response is given in minutes, hours, or days. You should choose hosting provider that provide immediate response when you get into trouble.
• Ensure that data backup is performed by the hosting provider
What we need to make sure before selecting hosting not just do a backup or not, but also how often do backups of your data and how easy the process of data recovery when problems occur.
• Check the Support Methods provided.
Methods of support provided are by phone, tickets, email, chat, and SMS. We should choose a web hosting provider that has all or at least have a fixed telephone number.

4. Select the package in accordance with what you need.
• Choose a storage capacity as needed
The greater the storage capacity of course the cost is also more expensive. Storage capacity is often measured in MB (megabytes) or GB (gigabytes) and some have infinite. You should choose according to your needs and your budget too.
• Select the bandwidth capacity data transfer as required
Bandwidth capacity is the amount of data transfer traffic, and it is usually measured in GB / month. For instance, hosting provider that provide bandwidth of 1GB a month, meaning that if we have an HTML file with a size of 30kb (including images) and your blog visitors per day about 100 people, then you spend your bandwidth about 90MB per month (30KB x 100 people x 30 days). And if you have 10 pages so you will need 900MB. The more visitors mean more bandwidth.  You should select hosting provider that has additional costs feature when the bandwidth is exceeding the limit.
• Select the number and types of databases are provided as needed
If you create a blog or a dynamic website, make sure you check how many databases are provided and the type of database is (e.g MySQL, PostgreSQL, Access). If you only want to create a blog, then one database is adequate. If you want to make a lot of niche blogs then you will need a lot of databases. You should choose hosting package with a minimum of 10 MySQL databases.

5. Figured out the script language and the control panel
If you create a PHP file so then your host must supports PHP file. Likewise, if you make the web using ASP, JSP, Perl, or Python, you should know that the hosting supports it. You should choose hosting provider that support all existing scripting languages, or at least PHP and ASP.

Good Control panel is based on account management. You should choose hosting that has been using the latest version control panel, has instant installation feature (e.g softaculous,fantastico)  and the latest PHP MyAdmin.

6. Figured out the operating system
It also needs to consider is the OS server. Is it Unix, Linux or Windows? You can select linux server hosting provider, because it is cheaper and easier to use.

7. Figured out the price, payment terms and payment method
Do not be influenced by the price offered. Check the prices offered by hosting providers. It is often that the price is directly proportional to the quality, but also if the price is too expensive, it can show the inefficient of things. Avoid hosting provider that offers excess capacity (space of tens or hundreds of gigabytes and bandwidth of hundreds or thousands of gigabytes) but the price is too low. It’s like that this hosting providers just do overselling, Thay sell exceeds the capacity that they actually possess.

Some web hosting may provide facilities free trial (try it for a few days) but maybe after a few months. It is important to choose hosting package that provides a monthly payment option packages that do not bind that you could break up at any time if you no longer need their services or has money-back guarantee for packages with payments over a longer period.

8. Check the availability of additional features
Email: Availability Email POP3, auto responder, and auto forwarding.
CGI-Bin: Availability CGI-Bin will help in modifying the scripts that have been prepared or are looking for scripts that can be used.
FrontPage: What special extensions needed for FP.
IP Address: The availability of a unique IP address for your blog or website.
Log Files: Log files that store the raw data line by line detail of activity.
Statistics: The availability of statistics to support the checking of traffic your blog or website in the form of summaries and preferably in graphic form.
Secure Server (SSL): Availability of service secure server (SSL) is needed for e-commerce.
Shopping Cart: The availability of a standard shopping cart for e-commerce needs

9. Read the TOS and policies of web hosting provider
TOS and policies of each hosting providers ared different. Therefore you need to read and study them carefully. For example, there are several providers mentioned the prohibition of warez links or adult website without us knowing it but sometimes we forgot to enter the element. Therefore you should choose hosting provider that have more lax policies.

Those are some tips that can be used to choose hosting provider for your blog or website. I hope these tips about how to choose hosting provider can be a reference for you.

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Category: Blogging