If your website is used for professional purposes, you must be sure to avoid free hosting services at all costs. It may seem tempting if you are on a tight budget, but there are too many downfalls to make it worth your time and effort just to have constant problems with the host.
If you are looking into a host, check out the host’s up-time percentage. This means find out how often they are up and running and how often they deal with downtime and have system updates and issues. The higher this percentage, the better the host will probably be and the less problems you will have with your own site, staying up and running.
Familiarize yourself with different statistics’ tools to keep track of your performances. You can use Analog Stats, Webalizer FTP, Webalizer web stats or AWStats. These tools allow you to see how many visitors you are getting every month, which pages they are viewing and what your bandwidth is used for.
Make sure that you host your website with a company that has good customer support in place. If you do not have adequate support behind you, you may not be able to fix problems that you run into in a timely manner, and that can wind up hurting your bottom line.
Never register your domain with your web hosting service. Many people mistakenly do this, and then realize later they can’t transfer their site over to another web hosting service. This can happen when a company goes offline and bust or for other various reasons. Make sure you register your domain with a different company than your web hosting provider.
Unfortunate to say, but there isn’t an “unlimited” amount of room on the Internet for everyone to jump around on your webpage, download media, and upload games of their own. This is known as “bandwidth” and most interactions between yourself, consumers, or surfers and your hosting server will eat away at your bandwidth cap. Always keep a close eye on where it stands, and be careful with what you upload.
If money is tight or your website has not begun to profit yet, you can always go with a free hosting site. While they may not be the most ideal web hosts, and may not offer the amount of options you would like, free hosts are a good place to start when starting up a new website.
Check to see if your web hosting service gives you an easy method to submit your pages to search engines. You will also want to know how much control you have over search engine optimization and keywords, as well as how often you can send updates for no charge.
Read the fine print with all hosting contracts. A host might seem to offer certain enhancements, but the fine print might say that these are only offered if you sign up for a long-term contract or commit to a certain package level. So review the specifics of your contract to avoid disappointment.
One of the most important things to look for when choosing a web hosting provider is high server uptime records. You’ll want to look for providers offering uptime in the high 99% range. One caveat though, is providers claiming 100% uptime. Although a perfect uptime rating might indeed be accurate, it can sometimes indicate required maintenance and upgrades are being neglected.
Choose a hosting service that allows you to instantly and easily view your web statistics. You will want to know things such as how many people are visiting your website and what pages they are viewing. You can even find out how long they stayed on your site, and what search words they used to find you. These can be important in the long run, so use a server who has these tools.
As you have seen, choosing the right web hosting service can mean the difference between success and failure for your website. Before you make this important choice, you need to do your research and know more about web hosting.
Remember what you have learned in this article, and the process should go more smoothly.
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