Rats Attic Forum

Making the right choice when choosing
a web hosting company is crucial to
the success of your site. Make the
wrong choice and you'll have to suffer
through unacceptable periods downtime
and slow server transfer speeds.

You can have the most professional looking web site on the net, but if the quality of your web hosting company is less than what it should be your site may be slow to load and down altogether for extended periods of time. In short, take care and do your homework before you decide on a web hosting company.

The first thing to consider above all else is the speed of the web host's server connection to the internet. The internet connection should be dual T3's at a minimum. Anything less than that will cause your site to bog down during peak traffic hours. Don't consider a web hosting company that offers less regardless of how low the price is.

Next you need to consider the server hardware itself. State of the art in the computer industry changes rapidly, but you should only consider a web hosting company that uses the latest equipment with plenty of memory to ensure fast server response at peak times.

To be considered, a potential web hosting company should offer these features as a bare minimum:

  ·  Uptime guarantee - Anything less than 99.5% is simply
     unacceptable for a quality web host

  ·  Storage - 200 MB to allow for expansion as your site
     grows (and it will) You can always upgrade.

  ·  Bandwidth - 5 Gigabytes per month. Some web hosting
     companies advertise unlimited bandwidth. You should
     know that there is no such thing. There's always a
     bandwidth limit that is known only by the web host.
     Exceed that limit and they'll cancel your account in a
     heartbeat. It's much better to know what the limit is
     up front.

You should also expect to have the following features
available at no extra charge even if you don't need them
right now. Sooner or later you will.

  ·  SQL database support

  .  suPHP support

  ·  PHP support

  ·  Server side includes

  ·  Access to your raw traffic logs

  ·  Password protected directories

  ·  Daily backups

  ·  Other miscellaneous features that may be required
     for your particular site

  ·  A money back guarantee

Don't even consider a web hosting company that doesn't offer the above features as a bare minimum. There are several sites that make it easy to compare web hosting plans.