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(originally published in The
Jerusalem Post, December 2004)
Location, Location, Location:
Finding a host for your Web site
Here's a sad but common scenario: The Magniv Company hired
a competent website designer and the resulting site is highly
credible, attractive to its target audience, and search engine
friendly. But Magniv decided to host the site with a new
company that offered a tempting price and loads of cool-sounding
features. As a result of this decision, the site is frequently
inaccessible, e-mails get lost in cyberspace, and Magniv's
urgent appeals to the host's Support team remain unanswered.
Don't let this happen to you. There's a vast choice of Web
hosts; devote some time and thought to selecting an effective
one.
Following is a checklist of factors to consider when shopping
for a host server:
- Size matters - It's important to host
with a large, solid company that has a good reputation,
site backups,
responsive
Help people, and server technicians working 24/7. Don't
be tempted to host with a "reseller". This is
usually a smaller company, often consisting of one individual
or
a very small staff, which has leased a big block of server
space that it carves up and resells to website owners.
If anything goes wrong, you can't contact the actual server
owners, but are at the mercy of the reseller. He might
be
available -- but he may be on vacation, or may even abruptly
close up shop and disappear. Even less reliable are companies
that own and manage their own servers, but are understaffed
or undereducated; such hosts typically experience lots of
downtime.
- Uptime -While even major hosts can be
hacked and experience some downtime, this should be an
extremely
rare occurrence.
Most sites with reliable hosts should be available upwards
of 99% of the time, and there should be virtually no missing
e-mail.
- Autonomy -The host's site should include a perfectly-functioning "control
panel" and online Help documentation. This allows
you, or your designer, to efficiently perform routine tasks
such
as assigning new mail accounts, making new virtual domains,
etc. With some hosts even such minor issues require the
involvement of the support staff, which makes every procedure
agonizingly
slow and awkward.
- Feature packages - While some hosts
offer a choice of server (Unix or Windows), others specialize
in a single platform.
Check with your designer to determine if any of the code
in your site is dependant on a particular type of server.
- Toys -
Some hosts offer a dizzying array of plug-ins and
options that can be added to your site -- at a price. But
before allowing these goodies to affect your decision to
purchase, carefully consider whether they'll be useful
to you. Not every site needs a blog, shopping cart, message
board, etc.
- Cost - Bearing in mind the preceding points,
it's obvious that scrimping on hosting costs can be an
example of being
penny-wise but pound-foolish. You've invested time and
money in building a site; make sure it's available to your
target
audience by choosing a host that is reliable and accountable.
Now that you know what to look for, how do you determine
whether a specific host meets all your requirements? There's
no foolproof answer. Certainly company size and the length
of time they've been in business provide some indication.
On the other hand, rock-bottom prices should make you suspicious.
As with other services, the best method of choosing may be
to ask for recommendations from colleagues. If they do recommend
their hosts, use a few of the free tools I've listed below
to examine their sites with objective feedback on server
performance
issues.
In any case, it's best not to tie yourself to a long-term
hosting package until you're certain you're satisfied. When
first signing up with a new host, take the minimal plan available
and then monitor carefully. If worse comes to worst, switch
to a new host.
Resources:
Do you have any questions? Contact
me and I'll try to answer them in upcoming articles. Also,
you may subscribe for
free to the AtarTec newsletter, which consists of new
articles as well as notifications of critical Windows
updates and relevant virus information.
Request a free
estimate for your web site project.
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