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A Guide To, Website & Blog

How to Choose Web Hosting for your Website or Blog

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You have a great idea for a website or your business. Perhaps you’ve even already registered your own domain name (if you haven’t, you should read When I Have Time article How to Buy a Domain Name and what to do with it first).

Now that you’re ready to start creating that website you’ve been dreaming about, you’ll need to get web hosting: a place where you can store and modify your website’s content and make it accessible online.

The choice of a web hosting provider is a very personal one. I say this because, for every person who has had a good experience with a provider, you will find one or five or ten who have utter loathing for that exact provider.

I would evaluate a potential web hosting provider based on the following considerations:

  • Installing or Utilizing Blog or CMS (Content Management System) Software
  • 3rd-party Software Installation
  • Technical Support
  • Disk Space and Data Transfer
  • Video Streaming
  • Backup and Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Server
  • Transferring Away & Refunds

Here’s some more detail about what to consider for each one:

  • Installing or Utilizing Blog or CMS (Content Management System) Software

The ease-of-use of incorporating the blogging platform with your provider is what makes the difference when going to purchase web hosting. Even if you don’t intend to open a blog, many blog/CMS software can be used for static websites as well (like WordPress, which I love). Each blog or CMS software has operating system and/or software components required to run, so check with your intended provider before buying hosting and/or the software.

Some providers will give you a “push-button” or “1-click” installation which will automate the installation of blogging platforms. Other providers will provide a hosting solution that gives you access to the more technical side of your hosting environment like executing scripts, setting up databases and modifying your file system permissions. Check to see if the hosting provider lists which blogging software can run on their servers. If you cannot find this information, I strongly suggest writing an email to their tech support with a list of your blog software’s technical requirements to get confirmation before purchasing a hosting agreement (or blogging software). Here’s WordPress’ list of requirements.

  • Ease-of-installation of 3rd party software

As mentioned above, if you are not particularly tech-savvy, it’s important that you understand how much the provider can integrate blog or other 3rd-party software into your web hosting. Even if you’re not interested in hosting a blog, you may need a forum, a photo gallery, a wiki or e-commerce software for your site, and many hosting providers can offer these software integrations or at least support their installation.

Many providers will specify how much control you have over your hosting environment and how much you can put your hands on it (if you can run PHP scripts, install a database, modify the .htaccess file, etc.) but the final compatibility, installation and upkeep of the 3rd-party software will be your responsibility. Some providers will even provide a list of which popular 3rd party software is compatible or is available for push-button installation.

  • Technical support: Direct Contact available? Guaranteed Response Times?

When I first started hosting with a certain hosting provider, they made it very difficult to contact them directly with problems, and I often had to do a down-the-rabbit-hole chase to find the support email address on their web site. Now, they provide an 800 number to talk with a real person.

Other hosting providers will not give you a direct contact, but they may give you a guaranteed response time or an option to escalate and therefore you know how long it might take to get resolution to your problem.

Before it’s really a necessity, you should identify the support methods in case of an emergency: contact email address / website / telephone, and other information needed to contact them like your username or account information. Other important limits to keep in mind are if the provider limits your technical support to a certain number of questions or if they provide a guaranteed response time or service level agreement on resolution of problems.

If you require a certain level of support, investigate first, and also be prepared to pay extra to ensure you can get it.

  • Disk Space and Data Transfer

If you’ve read the Long Tail by Chris Anderson (great book!) you know that disk space is quickly becoming a commodity and most providers will now offer huge amounts of disk space for a low cost. You probably won’t come near to using all of it.

Data transfer is related to the transfer and viewing of the information on your website. When a visitor opens a page on your website, your hosting provider must deliver the text and images on that page to their computer. Multiply that for each visitor, and data transfer may become important to your site if you’re having people download a lot of content (like high resolution images, music files or large PDFs) or if you have enormous amounts of traffic.

Most providers will provide you with such a large amount of data transfer that you can monitor in case you experience a jump in traffic, or upgrade if necessary. Investigate how much is provided with each plan, and in case your website gets linked from Digg or CNN, how you can temporarily meet that demand or upgrade

  • Video Streaming

Most videos embedded in blogs can be hosted externally to the blog (on YouTube or Vimeo, for example), but if you are planning on having a lot of video content and would like complete control over the delivery and look & feel of that content, check with your hosting provider if video streaming from their servers is included in the hosting plan you’re considering. This may also figure into calculating the data transfer they provide – the more videos you are streaming, the more data transfer you’ll need.

  • Backup

Backup is one of the most important things to your online presence. How often does your host back up your data? Daily, hourly? How far back can you get get copies of your data and files, and with which methods can you access your files? Do you need to submit a request to the provider’s Support, or can you be autonomous and access it directly from your administration panel?

If you’re generating a lot of content and/or you have a very active community generating content and comments, you will need to be more sensitive about how often that content is backed up.

Note that with many blog/CMS software, the backup of the database may not be done by the hosting provider but must be done directly by the user and the hosting provider may provide backups of the content that is not in the database (i.e., image and downloadable files).

  • Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Server

By default, most basic web hosting plans will be considered shared hosting, which means that other websites and domains will be hosted on the same server as your site. You’ll be sharing resources like the server’s disk space, processor, and RAM. For most site or blog needs, shared hosting will be sufficient, but if your site is very popular, you may need a step up from shared hosting like a virtual server or a dedicated server.

Of course, you probably won’t know you need a more robust solution when you first start your website, but it’s a good idea to see if the host has other options available and what you’d need to do to upgrade when the time comes.

  • Transferring Away & Refunds

Pay close attention to the refund policy of the providers. Some offer money-back guarantees if you are interested in doing a trial of their services for a few days or weeks so you can get a feel for the service and the administration panel.

Choosing Web Hosting Providers

I don’t want to make this article about endorsement, though I use both Dreamhost and Yahoo for my hosting needs, as I mentioned above – for every person who has a good experience, there will be 10 more with a negative one. I suggest you Google “web hosting providers,”, read some ratings’ sites, ask your friends with successful sites who they use, and evaluate your own site’s needs before buying hosting.

From Lifehacker’s readers: Most Popular Reliable and Affordable Web Hosts

Image by Donovan Henneberg-Verity

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Ask The Geek

Ask The Geek : How Do I Start Building My E-Commerce Site?

3 Comments

atgHave a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask The Geek,

OK, so I made my site and then found out (too late) that I can’t add shipping profiles to it for different countries. So I need a ‘proper’ website with something like oscommerce or x cart, but I really can’t do it myself.

I was thinking about paying a web designer $2200 to design and set up a site for me but it is a huge amount of money to spend which I don’t really have and I would rather spend less, but I don’t know where to turn to. I do know that I am not capable of doing this myself. Just trying to design my labels in Photoshop makes me scream in frustration!

I want a good looking site that makes people want to go back, nothing fancy like Flash, but a clean professional site. What do you think? Do you have any reliable contacts with e-commerce and web design experience? Is $2200 too much?

Sorry for all the questions!

Ready and Rearing to Go

Dear Ready and Rearing to Go,

For your e-commerce site, that’s a good price, and that’s a bad price….depending on what the specs (specifications) are – what is the designer offering for that price? And, more importantly, what do you WANT? I strongly suggest you sit down and make a list of all the features and functionalities you’d like your site to have. You can get a good idea by looking at similar e-commerce sites though there’s a more formal process called benchmarking that I’ll explain in another post.

Not knowing what you want will cost you a lot of money, either in paying for features you don’t need, or having to insert something later because it wasn’t planned for initially or included in the first quote.

Make a list of all those features and functions of the site, and then prioritize them – label some “must have” and some “nice to have” – having this list you can start evaluating not only his offer but you need to figure out if there are any holes in the offer or if there’s something you can remove to save money.

If you get an answer “well, that will cost you more” at least you know it’s because YOU have decided that functionality is critical. And, hopefully knowing what you want will help you see if there are some free alternatives or compromises you can make.

Here’s some things to consider for the website’s front-end (visible to your clients), but this list is not exhaustive – I suggest you brainstorm a list of anything you can think of:

  • Customer Assistance – is it live, through a contact form, or using an email address? How many different forms of contact will you offer your customers?
  • Types and Methods of Payment – is the payment happening through your e-commerce site, or is it resting on an external payment site (like PayPal)?
  • Shopping Cart and Login – Can your users buy more than one of your products at a time, hence the shopping cart? Do you want users to be able to save their shopping carts via login, without a login, send an order in pieces to two different addresses?
  • Tools – are there any special tools your site will need? Will they have to be specially developed (from 0) or customized (from existing paid or free tools) for your site? Tools like calculators, calendars, profiles?
  • Flash and Video – do you want or need an animated introduction to your products, or video? (**note: this is where the price starts to skyrocket)
  • Stock Images – Do you need imagery/graphics for your site? Since you are selling your own product, you probably won’t need to buy any stock images for your website, but it can be an additional cost.

Since you’re already a blogger, you know how important it is to have hands-on access to your content, so with regards to the back-end of the system (the underlying servers, software and code), here are some things to consider:

  • Back-end software – Is the back-end (content management system) proprietary / their creation? Or is it built on a readily-available software like WordPress, Joomla, etc.? Can you learn how to use it by finding information online?
  • Making changes – How easily will you be able to intervene to make changes to the text on the site? The images? The design?
  • Site Installation and Location – Where will the site reside – on their servers, or will they install this system on your server / where you buy hosting? This is important in case you decide to leave – what happens then? Is there a clause in the contract at how they will deliver the system to you, or what they will deliver?

These are some things to get you started. While I can’t tell you exactly what is good value for that price you quoted, hopefully you’re starting out with your must-haves for designing your website and you can even get a second quote to compare them.

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)

Ask The Geek

Ask The Geek: Should I Consolidate My Websites?

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atgHave a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Geek,

I have three different websites and I’m wondering if I should consolidate them: a website built with a template wizard, a blog on a free site, and another website hosted for free. They are all three at different locations as I have tried to keep our cost down, but need to consolidate, focus and try to use one platform if possible. I am thinking to go towards WordPress, as it seems like it supports static web sites and blogs, but just hope it works with Mac.

What about merging my two sites, blog and web for the B&B on one site, like WordPress? I am worried to have my web for the Inn get lost or lose what little page rank I have.

Thanks,
Dispersed and Confused

Dear Dispersed and Confused,

It seems like a simple question, but there’s quite a few things to address:

  • Using WordPress with a Mac
  • How to Maintain PageRank
  • Hosting and Managing Multiple Sites

Let’s take a look at each one.

  • Using WordPress with a Mac

First of all, from a user standpoint WordPress can be administered from any operating system, because you are going to access it through a website interface, so don’t worry about using your Mac with WordPress. As long as you have a web browser, you’ll be able to access the WordPress management console correctly. WordPress can also be installed on both Linux and Windows operating systems, but you probably won’t need to worry about that – your web hosting provider will. Check the WordPress requirements and confirm that WordPress can be installed with your web hosting provider – most providers will specify this information in the FAQ or even provide 1-click installation services. If you don’t see it, don’t be afraid to send an email before buying a particular service.

I’m a WordPress fangirl, and I am using it on both blogs and static websites. So I say, come on over! You can import your free blog with WordPress quite easily. Start by checking out the WordPress forum – it’s very detailed and has articles on everything including Importing Content from various blog platforms into WordPress.

Second, I think your instincts are right to try and consolidate your business’ blog and website on the same domain. In fact, I think that free blogs should never be used for business-related websites as you want to build your brand on your own domain if possible. You’ll definitely want to read my article about buying a domain: {Read WHT article : How To Buy a Domain and What to Do with It}

  • How to Maintain PageRank

PageRank is a value that Google assigns to a website and certain pages within that website. While not all of the elements of this calculation are known, it is safe to assume that regularly updating your website and the number of incoming links to your content are important to affect your site’s PageRank.

It’s probable you will lose PageRank by moving your content to a different domain. But, the PageRank you had previously attained was technically  someone else’s property/domain. Wouldn’t you rather see it attributed to http://www.yourdomain.com instead of blogspot.com or another free blog site?

This is perhaps the hardest part of moving a website, but I can assure you that the Internet is constantly changing and updating, so you’ll have many more chances to regain PageRank by putting good content out in the future. Starting over with PageRank is best done sooner than later.

I recommend moving your free blog to a blog hosted under your domain and then with the new launch:

  1. Contact those sites still linking to your old site and (gently and politely) ask them to update their blogrolls.
  2. Plan a series of content for post-launch that are compelling and link-worthy to jumpstart your Page Rank recovery.
  3. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools to register your website and start tracking it in Google (don’t forget to use a statistics tool like Google Analytics to track your content!)

You’ll be well on your way to getting back your PageRank.

  • Hosting and Managing Multiple Sites

This is something that bears further investigation based on the web hosting providers you’re considering. Some web hosting providers will allow you to host multiple or unlimited domains for the same price. Note that I’m not referring to two different domains pointing to / associated with identical content, but two distinct and separate sites, hosted with a single provider and paying a flat (monthly) fee.

Note that some of these solutions may not be ideal for sites with large amounts of traffic, but that is something that can be evaluated (by regularly checking your statistics) periodically to see if you’d need a more robust solution.

I don’t want to suggest a particular provider, but trying doing a Google search for “hosting multiple domains” “web provider multiple domains” to get started at finding a provider.

Hope this helps you get started,

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)