Web Hosting 101 - Planning for Success

Over the years, I've grown to know many, many web hosting customers. The one theme I've seen among most of them is frustration, at one point or another, with their web host. Why? There are a myriad of reasons - downtime, lack of support, lost files, failed hardware, and the list goes on. Take most other service based industries and you won't see the same emotional response from their clientele when things go wrong. Why? Well, as an online business web hosting is the life-blood of your business... and when something is wrong with your web hosting, you're not making money.

It doesn't have to be this way. With a little planning, patience and learning, small businesses can make informed choices and take control of their web hosting. This all begins with choosing the right web host for you. While its outside the scope of this article to discuss the merits of the different flavors of web hosting (i.e. free, shared, vps, dedicated, cloud and colocation), you need to first understand what type of hosting service you need. Once you've made that decision, finding the right host for your company is the next order of business.

Chances are, you already have a web hosting account. This should give you a good basis for understanding what kind of hosting account you need. You need to know things like how many domains you need to host, how much disk space you need, how much transfer you need and what kind of control panel you're currently using. If you're new to the web hosting scene, a good account manager at any hosting company should be able to help you sort out these details.

With these details in hand, it's time to go shopping. Research, research, research. Use sites like hostreview.com to put together your shortlist of hosting companies. Check their sites for their plans and pricing. Look for real user reviews of hosts in your short list on forums and hosting review sites. Social media tools like LinkedIn can also be a great source of getting the inside scoop on the performance of a web host.

Doing thorough research on your web host is important, but you also need to set your expectations properly. Support at hosting companies is typically done via email through a ticket system, not via phone, although many will offer phone support. This is a good thing, trust me. If you've ever had problems with your hosting account, you probably understand how complex things can get. Using a ticketing system to organize support responses may be impersonal, but ultimately it's the best way to resolve problems quickly and efficiently.

One final note in parting, regarding backups. Your web host may have backups of your data, but you always, always, always, need to have your own backups. Properly stored backups will not only help your team stay organized, but may also pull you out a tight jam one day. Have fun and good luck.