Ask the Network Guy!

There are several pieces to this puzzle that need to be considered and investigated.  Here are the basics steps, In this article I am going to discuss “Finding a Web Host Company”.  Again, I will talk about each of the steps, breaking them into smaller chunks of data as to be able to give the proper space for each.

• Obtain a Domain Name
• Find a Web Hosting Company
• Setup account with the Web Hosting Company, and setup any backend items needed
• Produce a Web Site
• Post your Web Site to your Web Hosting Company’s Server
• Update your Website as needed

Finding a Web Hosting Company:

This may seem easy enough, but I have found that there are a few areas that you need to keep in mind when looking for and signing up with a host company, and price is only a concern.  Here is a good starting list as one begins their search:

• Purpose of your web site
• Technology supported
• Bandwidth provided
• Reliability and/or SLA (Service Level Agreements)
• Web Site Size & number of email accounts, user accounts, sub domains, etc.
• Free Add-on software provided by the Hosting Company
• Terms and Conditions from the Hosting Company
  

What is the purpose of your web site?  Answering this question in detail early on will help you develop a clear picture of all the items that will be influencing your decisions concerning this web site and possible part of your business plan.  Are you trying to sell something?  Are you hosting a blog site?  Are you offering music to the world?  The list can go on and on, but I think you get the point.  Define your purpose, and you will begin to have a structure develop that will help guide you though all the possibilities.  For this article I will use this blog site as well as other sites that I have maintained as examples, and show how defining a purpose early on will answer questions.  At the same time we will tackle some good questions….hang on for the ride.

What technology will your web site need?  For this blog site I am in need of a few things.  First I need a database for the blog software.  Second (partly my choice) I wanted to host my web site on a unix/linux platform rather than a Windows Server.  Why you ask?  Well that is a legitimate question.  Some of the software that I want to run was made for a UNIX or a Linux server.  So this prompted me to find a web hosting company that provided the correct server type for my particular software.  Just and FYI, most good hosting companies will provide solutions based on both UNIX and Microsoft servers.

There are other items under the Technology Review that also need to be considered.  For example, do they support FrontPage Extensions?  If you plan on using Microsoft FrontPage to build your web site this is a necessary item to have in place.  For myself I was concerned about the PERL version.  Perl is a programming language and like all software there are different versions, I needed to ensure that the hosting company maintained a certain version number or higher.  My software needed 5.8.1.  The site actually has upgraded to version 5.8.7.. so I know that my software will work ok.  My web site also needed MYSQL, so I wanted to make sure that they supported the correct version of that software as well.

I think you are getting a rather clear view as to how technology plays a roll in your decision of a web hosting company.  Now back to your web site, by knowing what you hope to accomplish, you will know more about what additional software that you will need to run your web site.  This knowledge will translate to you asking the web hosting company if they support such and such software.

Web Site hosting companies will provide you with so much bandwidth for your web site.  For example my hosting company provides me 2000GB/mo of transfer.  So when people visit my site and open pages, and those pages have text and pictures on them, the more people that come to my site will use more bandwidth.  On average 1 visitor to my web site probably uses anywhere from ¼ to ½ of a MB; this does not sound like much.  However these little bits of information do add up.  I once had a company that provided 10GB per month of transfer.  However the web site being viewed was graphic intensive and on average the site was using between 15 and 20 GB per month.  The hosting company kept adding this extra usage onto the bill each month producing a larger and larger bill.  So I moved the web site to another hosting company where at that time I was guaranteed 50 GB of transfer a month.  This saved me lots of money in the monthly hosting bill.

You will want to find a hosting company that has good reliability.  If your web site is for business use and having your web site down is costing you money by the buckets for every minute or hour that your web site is unavailable, you want to find a company that offers a Service Level Agreement.  Basically this is an agreement between parties saying that they guarantee your web site will remain available, and if not that there could be financial retributions paid back to you for the loss of sales, etc.  So if you sell products online and if your web site is making you “X” dollars an hour, you want to have a good SLA contract in place to ensure that your web site will remain available.

Bandwidth is important, but so is the size of your web site.  I was working with a company that provided 300MB of space for the web site files.  But the site was again picture heavy and was growing in size.  I finally outgrew their size limitations and found myself moving to a new hosting company.  So think about your site.  Will you be hosing photos?  Audio, video or multimedia clips?  Large files?  Will you be in need of extra room?  If so plan ahead.  But also think about a few other items.  How many email addresses will you need?  Do you need sub domain?  I had a client that wanted to house 100 to 300 extra sub domains with his web site; unfortunately the hosting company would not allow that number, so he had to move the web site.

What software do you need for your web site?  Some companies will provide what we in the industry call add-on software, and the best part… you don’t have to pay for it.  A good example of a add-on software is a blogging software.  The company that I use offers things from blogging to ecommerce carts to image galleries.  Just for the record, I was not happy with the blogging software that was provided for free, so I researched and found Movable Type.

Sometimes you will find that you need to have a conversation with the web hosting company to ensure that they will allow you to add particular software or host a particular type of software.  Here is a great example.  During the pixel craze I was working on a pixel site.  After building the web site and just as the site was going to go live to the public it was found out that the web hosting company would not allow a pixel site under any hosting plan.  So the entire site had to be packed up and moved to a new hosting company.  That added a lot of extra work, not to mention hours, and delayed the date that the site was supposed to debut.