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The Right Host
One of the most important business relationships for a Web Site Owner
(whether the site be business or hobby) should be with a web hosting
company; after all, you pay them to look after your site and you expect
them to take good care of it. It stands to reason then that choosing the
right host for your site is important for anyone that uses or relies on
it.
Saving Face
How your chosen web host looks after the server that hosts your site
will reflect on you as the owner of the site. If the site is often
unavailable due to unreliable servers, poor server configuration or even
more traffic than the server can handle, then this will give the
impression that you are someone who doesn't really know what they are
doing.
We would all like to think that once our site is up and running, it
would always be available to everyone that wanted to view it, whenever
they want to view it. If you've been using the Internet long enough, you
should know by now that this isn't the case. There will always be those
times when some sites will not be available for whatever reason. That is
the unpredictable nature of the Internet.
If the site is a business site, it could loose income from the orders
or brand exposure it could have received; personal and hobby sites could
also loose revenue during the time the site is unavailable at any time,
although arguably not so much. Even sites that are not for profit can
get a reputation if visitors find the site unavailable or slow to use.
While the potential loss of revenue is the most obvious reason for
wanting to choose a good host, there are often hidden problems too.
Quite often a problem with the host can affect the other services
associated with the domain. Services such as email and FTP could also be
affected; at times such as these you may well be unable to check your
email. Worst still, messages could get sent back to the sender and your
visitors could come to the conclusion that the site no longer exists!
Service Level Guarantees
While there are undoubtedly some problems causing downtime that are
beyond our control, we can go some way to reducing the risks by choosing
the host that is most suitable for the needs of the site. Any host worth
their salt should inform you of scheduled downtime before it happens via
email, this will allow you to make alternative plans should you need to.
Of course there is no way of predicting any unscheduled downtime, but
many hosts will offer an uptime guarantee which will compensate you in
some way; the hosts that are more confident of their levels of service
will often offer better terms should anything go wrong.
It is one thing to think you are covered by these up-time guarantees,
but quite another when you think you have a claim. It may be an idea to
keep both a print and an electronic copy of the Terms of Service and any
other important documents from the day that you purchase a new hosting
plan.
One of the problems occurs simply because you are not able to monitor
the site yourself; there are however products and services available
that can carry out various tests to check if your site is still "live".
Even if you can prove that your site was unavailable to you or the
monitoring service for more than the agreed acceptable level, you should
always check the small print; if the problem was not your host's fault,
they may not need to pay up!
You get what you pay for!
One thing to remember is that there is a "someone" for everyone. What
might be my perfect host could be your perfect hosting nightmare. A
server that is well suited for one of your sites may slow down another.
There is no right host, so don't even try to visit and assess
them all, you can't!
Remember, it is in your best interests to find the most suitable
server set up for your site that you can afford, otherwise you can
easily get a reputation for being unreliable, unresponsive and uncaring.
Without even knowing or trying!
Next > Building a Checklist
This
article is part of a more
complete guide to
hosting and has been reproduced with
the permission of
Rosemarie Wise.
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