Choosing The Right Web Host For Your Blog
ADVERTISEMENTSThis is a guest post by Maneesh from UnNeglectable. If you are interested in writing a guest post too, let me know
Of the numerous make money blogs and pro-bloggers that we read time and again, a constant suggestion for better results from blogging is to have one�s own domain name and hosting the same outside of Blogger, Typepad and the likes.
With domain names the prices are pretty much the same all around and most often do not require any sort of support after the purchase. However when it comes to hosting your content on the web you find the need to choose the correct service provider paramount. A review of BloggingTips right here on JohnTP.com shows that they had an awful time with their host to begin with (look for Kevin Muldoon�s comment).
The kind of system your web host offers you will decide the scale and scope your blog will be able to attain. Yet I find very few posts talking about this first step into blogging. In this post we will look at some basic yet important things to keep in mind while deciding on your web host.
Bandwidth is everything
It is more than likely that inexperienced bloggers often tend to give more weight to the web space a company provides, often ignoring the more important aspect of monthly data transfer. Blogs being primarily text driven do not take up much space, however as your traffic increases the bandwidth you use multiplies. The ideal ratio is to have bandwidth that is 10 to 50 times more than the space your host provides you with. Proshay.com has a good introduction on bandwidth.
Beware of Overselling
Web Hosts lie and they lie bad. The saturated market that it is, web hosting providers have to compete at monstrous levels with each other. The result they over-promise and under-deliver. Many web hosts claim to give you bandwidth and space in 1000�s of GBs, a look at your own computer will give you an idea how huge this number is. The fact is most websites never cross 10GB of bandwidth in a month; they just don�t get enough traffic for that.
Web Hosts know this and therefore they can afford to oversell. They might actually be able to offer just 1000GB of bandwidth for all their users put together, yet they can safely �claim� to provide 500GB data transfer. Gullible customers are over awed by their generosity and make the dreaded purchase. Interestingly there is an entire website dedicated to this menace called, well overselling.com itself.
This website is designed to give potential web hosting customers an idea of an ever-growing, industry wide problem, known as ‘OverSelling’. We will go over what OverSelling is, offer a few methods which you can use to avoid choosing a provider that oversells their services and provide.
Put Price Aside
Hosting is not sold on Wal-Mart for a reason. Price is often the crux for most of our decision, but Web Hosting can be of any price and is often not the determinant of quality. Hosting is a service, and you need to decide the value of this service. Expensive dedicated servers would in all probability be of no use to you, while cheap hosting might have an impact on the quality of your blog itself, with outdated versions of scripts and high downtimes (time when your site is not available). You have to take a call on what kind of support you would require, what kind of features are you looking at and then figure out where is the best deal for these without compromising much on the quality.
Spend time on forums
Instead of asking a couple of friends about which web host is the best, spend time on forums, read through other people�s experience, ask them questions and read genuine reviews over there. Web hosts are scared of forums, if you become a regular over such communities, hosts will respond to your problems quicker than otherwise to save face. Also forums are a good way to find out the reputation of a host and help you avoid mistakes you might repent later.
These are my basic four step theory of beginning to select a web host. There are a lot of other parameters one can go into, but for now we stick to these 4 points. Hosting your websites is not a one time act, it is an ongoing process and you might have to be in contact with your service providers often, it is therefore best to choose someone you would want to work with than someone who you would rather do without.
Hope you find this useful in setting up your blog and perhaps at a later stage a power packed website as well.
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Posted on October 11th, 2007 | Category: Blogging |
maneesh
October 11, 2007 at 12:47 pm
thanks john!
JohnTP
October 11, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Nice post Maneesh. Owning a domain name is important to makes a blog stand out from the others. Finding a good host is important too.
David Bradley
October 11, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Something you must ensure when going for a webhost is that they won’t shut off your site because you go over bandwidth or server CPU allowances without giving you at least a few hours warning. This happened to me on a wordpress site of mine (not Sciencebase) that got a big spike from a social bookmarking site. Luckily, it was only down for an hour or so before I noticed, but I quickly switched host after that as they’d given no advance warning.
db
Bloddard
October 12, 2007 at 4:09 am
Great Post. This is definitely the sort of stuff most beginners overlook.
Nirmal
October 12, 2007 at 10:26 am
,
Good points here. But one thing I wanted to mention was about the Overselling issue. Well whats the problem with overselling as long as they are able to meet your demands. I think thats a strategy and nothing to be worried about. If they tell 1000GB and provide only 100GB, then it becomes an issue, otherwise I dont think there is any problem with Overselling.
indyank
October 12, 2007 at 10:55 am
Nirmal,i guess what he means by overselling is advertise more than you actually offer…basically tell lies…
maneesh
October 12, 2007 at 12:04 pm
-
very true, I guess adding a point on contacting your hosts reps and ascertaining various questions one has should also have been added
-
.. u have a very neat and nice blog
thanks
-
the problem with overselling is they don’t meet your demands.. like indyank said most web hosts in order to attract the less tech savvy customers hype up the space and bandwidth.. the fact is they allocate far less of these parameters to the customers .. you have to try and stay away from hosts which promise excessive space and bandwidth for peanuts.. one has to realize that space, data transfer, support etc. cost money.. so if someone offers terabytes of space and charges just $3-$5.. I would be skeptical.. I am not denying there are companies which do offer the space and traffic they claim.. but precaution is always advised
the solution is to go with reputed hosts (not necessarily the most popular ones)
Mark Penix
October 12, 2007 at 1:01 pm
, it doesn’t sound like your site went down, sounds like you got caught with the ‘digg effect’. Where it appears your website is down, but it is actually being beaten to death by too many requests.
Nirmal
October 12, 2007 at 5:55 pm
,
Well I agree to your point and I too made my point clear- As far as they offer what they promised, then over selling is not an issue.
BTW how can you check whether they provide what they promised?
maneesh
October 12, 2007 at 11:11 pm
If they are selling what they promised.. then they are not overselling ..
right..
on the subject of checking whether the hosts are delivering their promise, the best would be to make a really popular website or blog (which am sure yours is) and have loads and laods of traffic coming into them, if your site stays up they are delivering, if it doesn’t well.. you know what to do…
staying clear of overselling is a precaution, not a cure so to say, i mean it is something you should do before purchasing your hosting plan - you do this by checking two basic things
the space and bandwidth they are offering - if it seems very high, they most probably are
the price - if the price they charge for this extremely high parameters is minimal, then in this case they certainly are overselling..
understanding the fact that there are no free lunches and you get what you pay for should help you identify hosting packages that may fall short of expectation and promises..
I have a feeling I treat comments like a post field and go on and on.. do I? :p
Felix
October 13, 2007 at 3:42 am
Have you thought about doing a review of say top 100 hosting sites. I think it would make good reading.
alexander
October 13, 2007 at 3:45 am
its true the forums do work you get other peoples expirence and it inspires you. about the overselling i agree most do over promise but you dont get what they promised but you do find some that you get your moneys worth.
thegeekboys.com
maneesh
October 13, 2007 at 10:20 pm
.. I’d have done it had it been in my niche, I usually talk about branding and building online businesses… a 100 host review might stand out like a sore thumb on such a blog (maybe not) but yeah I think I can do one once I have a decent base of audience who would like to hear any opinion about anything from me ..
Felix
October 14, 2007 at 4:15 am
Nuff said, you are doing a great job already.
Nirmal
October 14, 2007 at 4:04 pm
,
Well can you say that all the top hosting services are not overselling? Inclusing the top ones like media temple. Every hosting providers do oversell and do you expect everyone to give you independent 300GB space and 3-4TB of bandwidth, thats not possible.
Overselling is just a strategy and seldom does every of the hosted domain takes complete bandwidth.
Awsaun
October 14, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I thought it is good if you include the recommended hosting provider on review
maneesh
October 14, 2007 at 11:45 pm
- I have mentioned in my post that the reason overselling came into the picture in the first place is because everyone doesn’t use the complete bandwidth or space… and yes it is a strategy..
but not all hosts do oversell.. and its not just the amount of space and b/w that constitutes overselling.. the price at which they are sold also comes into consideration..
for instance.. media temple’s grid service offers 100GB space for $20 a month.. 1and1 offers 250 gb space for $10 and 300gb space for $20.. something is amiss here right.. essentially they are just providing hardware space..at the same time a reputed host like asmallorange gives just 4.5gb of space for $20…
u seeing the difference in such a small set of options itself
my point of overselling was.. don’t get trapped into “large amount of space and bandwidth on offer” coz u don need them.. just buy what you would want.. be smart about ur choices and be practical..
- in hindsight .. yes i think i should have included a few names..
Noorizam
October 16, 2007 at 8:59 pm
great post manesh..
Rossa
October 23, 2007 at 11:04 pm
- There is many web host provider, anyway some have an experience with dreamhost?
marcus
November 1, 2007 at 6:32 am
: I’m a dreamhost user. It’s a cheap web host provider but, sometimes, it become slow.
Vivek
November 13, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I am seriously looking for a good web host for my wordpress blog. Any recommendations would be useful.
Most important aspects for me are:
a) good uptime
b) Not much of this CPU overload crap
I am not into buying 300 GB of storage or 3000 GB of transfer. I will never use them.
Please help.
fran
November 23, 2007 at 5:16 am
I had done some research as to who is happy with their webhost and who is not, too much time invested?! not really. unless you get someone else to do the dirty work to spend all that time finding a new webhost.
so here is the reason why im posting this win - win situation:
I got my hosting a few months ago with servage and I’m quite happy with them and the price is right, they give me tons of space and good traffic amounts. they have unlimited this unlimited that, most of which i would never use.
it was my friend that hooked me up and I wanted to share that with you as well as give you my coupon code, with that you get additional 2 months free and so do I. - thats the honest to goodness deal. I think you get that when you sign up for 12 months maybe less not sure.
here is the link, if you use this you dont have to put in the coupon number. you can do the same thing after youre on and continue to get free hosting when others sign up under your coupon code which you get when you sign up with them. best wishes, enjoy
heres the link:
http://www.servage.net/?coupon=cust38746
cheers
Brad
December 26, 2007 at 6:25 am
I totally agree with everything in this article. Especially the part about overselling.
One thing that I would add to this list is to choose a host that is not bogged down with clients. This is especially important in shared hosting. Look for hosts who have less than 100,000 clients. Support seems to get sketchy after that.
I tend to agree with everything on the http://thebestwebhostingreview.com web site. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t list how many clients each hosting company has.
dotservant.com website hosting
January 4, 2008 at 2:06 pm
It is a good practice to list down your own requirements and questions, send them to your shortlisted web hosts and then go through their responses, you will be able to filter out those that is likely to send ‘canned’ replies and generally be able to identify one that fits you.