We have put together 36 questions across 10 areas that you should as any hosting company before you purchase a website.
Technical Support:
Technical support should be readily available. Your average hold time should not exceed a couple of minutes. If the hold time for support is long, this means that there are a lot of problems with the product or there support is understaffed.
1. How strong is their technical support division?
2. What do they provide?
3. When are they available?
4. Does tech support cost extra?
Security:
The website hosting servers should be hosted at a remote location with multiple backup across multiple locations. The servers should also be dual firewall protected. If the websites are hosted in this type of an environment, it means that you are protected against any power failure, natural disaster, or people trying to steal your information. You can check how many servers a company is hosting by asking them for the address of one of the companies they host. Then go to http://whois.sc, and look up that name. Whois will tell you how many sites they are hosting. Use a company that is hosting several thousand websites.
5. How secure is the site?
6. What type of protection do they offer?
7. How can they insure that unauthorized users will not compromise the integrity of your Web site?
Storage:
The amount of storage your website hosting offers is related to how large your website can become. You want to make sure that you have enough space to not only to build your current website, but to expand in the future.
8. How much storage do they offer ?
9. A typical Web site uses between 20-30 MB.
10. Do they offer enough extra megabytes to for your business to grow into? 100MB is a good starting point.
Domains:
Getting a Domain name for your business is one of the most important things you could do. To find out more about domains, read our article ?
11. Will the hosting company register your Domain name?
12. How long will it take?
13. Is there any extra cost to you?
Design:
There are 3 basic website design options.
1) Hire a web developer to design the entire website.
2) A template solution that is inexpensive, but modifications are limited.
3) A table based solution where the initial content is provided by the hosting company but everything including the entire layout can be changed. Make sure which type you are purchasing and if this is the correct solution for you.
14. Do they have a builder that you can manage easily?
15. What type of computer background do you need to design your site?
16. Do you have internal control over content and updates?
Email:
There are 2 types of email. The first is POP 3. This email type is attached to the domain name, and the email can be viewed from a web mail Internet browser window, or downloaded to a program such as Outlook or Eudora. The second email type is a forwarding address or email alias, where you have an email address that is @YourDomain, but it forwards to a different email address. POP 3 is usually more desirable because you can view your email from a variety of applications, and it strengthens your company image.
17. How many email aliases comes with your package?
18. Will they have your domain name in them for a more professional appearance?
19. What is the cost to add extra emails?
20. Are there any additional costs?
Search Engine Optimization:
You should submit your website to the search engines, such as Google, about once a month. This will help to rank you higher in the search rankings
21. Are search engine submissions included in your package?
22. How does it work?
23. Do you have internal control over content and updates?
Cost:
Make sure there are no hidden costs. Some companies will give you a low price knowing that they can charge you for additional services latter on.
24. What are the costs involved?
25. What are the initial setup fees and what do you get exactly?
26. What are the monthly maintenance fees are what do they cover?
27. Are there any additional charges?
28. If so, what are they and why?
Contract:
29. Am I locked into a contract?
31. May I cancel at anytime?
32. Are there any penalty fees for switching or closing my account?
33. What happens to my content?
Value:
34. What makes them better than their competition?
35. Do they offer extra features, storage space, better technical support?
36. What exactly sets them apart?
For help or questions about Web Hosting, contact G2Apex at contact@G2Apex.com or call 408-454-6543
Source : http://www.articlealley.com/article_93092_2.html
Friday, August 24, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Choosing a Web Host
Choosing a web host seems to be a daunting task at first. For a beginner it would seem that the selection of a web host is more difficult that actually building a website. This is not the case; however there are a few items that need to be considered when choosing a plan. Understand that this guide is for novice webmasters, and that it is assumed advanced hosting requirements such as MySQL or other Windows Web Hosting specific applications will either not be required or already understood. Although we will touch on this information, it will not be covered in-depth.
Here we will look at number of visitors and download requirements, necessary formats, uptime, and the service level agreement.
Obviously more is better, but planning for traffic is important. If the site is very new and little to no marketing is actively driving traffic to a site then obviously it is of little concern. Of course if the site is new and you plan to run an ad during the Super Bowl, then you better be ready to take on some serious traffic. This is an extreme example, but it is relevant. Most young sites will receive no organic traffic until they make it into the search engines and begin to show up for searches. Email campaigns are a way of driving traffic without search engines, but this is known as “burst traffic” and occurs at regular intervals controlled by the webmaster. It is important to understand how much traffic should be expected and plan accordingly. Bandwidth costs money, so if you don’t need it, don’t buy it. 50 GB of transfer (downloads and uploads) will usually cost less than $10.00 USD per month so use that as a starting point.
The format of the website in question is important. Although the various scripting languages that can be used are a topic outside the scope of this guide, we will touch on it as some information is needed. Certain software is required to run certain applications. Most notably Widows specific applications will almost never run in Linux based servers. Popular examples of Widows Hosting specific applications are ASP, .NET, and MySQL. Linux has apps that will serve similar purposes so the need for a specific host can be overcome. CGI and PHP are popular examples of Linux based apps.
Most hosting companies will guarantee a certain amount of uptime. For small personal sites this isn’t much of an issue, but for business sites that are designed to earn money this is a big deal. Look for more than 99% uptime in a reliable host, and make sure this is in writing (electronic or otherwise). 100% is not reasonable even with appropriate redundancy in a system, so the best host around will offer 99.9% uptime.
A service level agreement should come with any hosting plan offered by a reputable firm. The less expensive the hosting plan is, the less service will come with it as a rule. Often a $10 monthly plan and a $50 monthly plan look almost identical till it comes down to what type of customer service is available. All plans come with some level of service, the least expensive being almost entirely email support. As the price tag goes up phone support becomes available, and at the highest end corporate and co-location support tends to be on-site. Don’t shy away from email support. It’s 24 hours and almost all issues can be dealt with in this format.
Jon Norwood is founder and managing partner of AccessHosts, a site dedicated to providing information on Windows Hosting as well as guides on how to best choose a service.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jon_Norwood
Here we will look at number of visitors and download requirements, necessary formats, uptime, and the service level agreement.
Obviously more is better, but planning for traffic is important. If the site is very new and little to no marketing is actively driving traffic to a site then obviously it is of little concern. Of course if the site is new and you plan to run an ad during the Super Bowl, then you better be ready to take on some serious traffic. This is an extreme example, but it is relevant. Most young sites will receive no organic traffic until they make it into the search engines and begin to show up for searches. Email campaigns are a way of driving traffic without search engines, but this is known as “burst traffic” and occurs at regular intervals controlled by the webmaster. It is important to understand how much traffic should be expected and plan accordingly. Bandwidth costs money, so if you don’t need it, don’t buy it. 50 GB of transfer (downloads and uploads) will usually cost less than $10.00 USD per month so use that as a starting point.
The format of the website in question is important. Although the various scripting languages that can be used are a topic outside the scope of this guide, we will touch on it as some information is needed. Certain software is required to run certain applications. Most notably Widows specific applications will almost never run in Linux based servers. Popular examples of Widows Hosting specific applications are ASP, .NET, and MySQL. Linux has apps that will serve similar purposes so the need for a specific host can be overcome. CGI and PHP are popular examples of Linux based apps.
Most hosting companies will guarantee a certain amount of uptime. For small personal sites this isn’t much of an issue, but for business sites that are designed to earn money this is a big deal. Look for more than 99% uptime in a reliable host, and make sure this is in writing (electronic or otherwise). 100% is not reasonable even with appropriate redundancy in a system, so the best host around will offer 99.9% uptime.
A service level agreement should come with any hosting plan offered by a reputable firm. The less expensive the hosting plan is, the less service will come with it as a rule. Often a $10 monthly plan and a $50 monthly plan look almost identical till it comes down to what type of customer service is available. All plans come with some level of service, the least expensive being almost entirely email support. As the price tag goes up phone support becomes available, and at the highest end corporate and co-location support tends to be on-site. Don’t shy away from email support. It’s 24 hours and almost all issues can be dealt with in this format.
Jon Norwood is founder and managing partner of AccessHosts, a site dedicated to providing information on Windows Hosting as well as guides on how to best choose a service.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jon_Norwood
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