Web Hosting for Dummies – First Timer Tidbits

If you’re the type that’s given much thought to getting yourself a web hosting package but always give up before getting started having thought it too complicated, rest assured you’re not alone. Far from it in fact as breaking through the seemingly hard shell in order to get to grips with hosting can seem a test to most, but once you get right to the heart of things you’ll realise it’s anything but.When broken down to the fundamentals there are in fact only a few things to take into account and a few matters to address, which include the following:         Choice of ProviderThe long and short of it is that the success or otherwise of your venture on the whole will be determined by the choice of provider you make…it’s as simple as that. There are thousands of them vying for your business and plenty will be perfect for the job, but make the wrong decision and you’ll find yourself back at square one.Assuming you’re looking to do a little more than just create the most basic of blogs with no real interactivity whatsoever, you’ll need to look into the following three factors with a careful eye:

• Stability of Servers – These days, when a business finds its website is unusable for even a few minutes each week, it could potentially lose a small fortune in earnings and suffer huge reputational damage. Generally speaking, the standard to aim for when choosing hosting is the GUARANTEE of no less than 99.9% uptime, though even this equates to a good 40 minutes each month that your site may not be active, so be careful.
• Technical Support – Less quantifiable by way of a stat but just as important, you need to understand that not all ’24-hour tech support’ means anything of the sort. In some cases it will mean that while you’re more than welcome to submit a ticket at all hours of the day and night, you’re actually out of luck if you expect a response in less than two days. Suffice to say, this doesn’t bode well with those trying to avoid downtime.
• Applications – And last of the three comes the applications on offer from the hosting provider, which might not all be of use to you now, but what about in the future? Don’t just buy in accordance with today, as today will be history by one minute after midnight!

Dedicated or SharedOther than this, it’s a simple case of making the choice between shared and dedicated hosting. Shared represents a piece of a shared server where its power and performance are shared by a bunch of businesses, while a dedicated hosting package means a server all to yourself. It all comes down to how much power and performance you need, though it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution.BudgetLast but not least, you’ll probably notice when looking to sign up that there’s often not much of a difference between the prices of entry-level and mid-end packages – often no more than a few dollars per month. The differences in performance and features however can be huge, so rather than clip your wings before even getting started with a limited hosting service, always think a little above the basics and chances are you won’t go far wrong.