A Reliable Hosting Provider Is Your Business Life Source--What You Need To Know...

Nov 15
08:13

2007

Mike Flynn

Mike Flynn

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You just cannot choose any old hosting provider! Do you want your website operating efficiently?

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Overview

Avoid being caught with a "Sorry For Any Inconvenience" (SFAI),A Reliable Hosting Provider Is Your Business Life Source--What You Need To Know... Articles staring at you from the monster on your monitor.

Imagine you are very excited about finishing your first website. You upload it to SFAI web hosting service, but to your dismal demise, your website is not showing on your screen.

Your website is your identity and an efficiently working website is extremely necessary step along your road to riches. Choosing a reliable hosting provider is one of your steps towards success.

Whether the reliable hosting provider is the most expensive or the least expensive,  it must have all the information documented and in detail about their web hosting plans and other related services. Don’t overlook the fact that being the most expensive or the least expensive does not mean the best.

It is worth knowing that there are, also, free web hosting providers. Free web hosting services are suitable for personal web pages, but inadvisable for commercial purposes.

Robert Fritz said, "If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise". Don't compromise in selecting your reliable hosting provider.

If you are building an e-commerce site, choose a reliable hosting provider that will ensure that your site runs efficiently and can perform the necessary functions to promote your site. You will not receive a guaranteed minimum uptime of 99% or higher with free web hosting. If your web hosting provider's server goes down, the injurious impact on your business is immeasurable.

What Are The Secrets of Selecting A Reliable Hosting Provider

To compile your list of web hosting providers, you first search for unbiased reviews. Best place to obtain a third party review is to check the latest reviews on forums. A web hosting provider should be a registered company and not an individual; check the BBB (Better Business Bureau).

Now, that you have established your list, gather these important details about each company:

  • Has the provider been in business for 3 or more years;
  • Is the provider incorporated, have a logo, physical address and phone number (preferably a 1-800 number);
  • Does the provider have leading edge technology and works with a professional website designer;
  • Does the provider have a reliable server with sufficient back up; that is, it has 24/7 monitoring capable of handling any emergency;
  • Does the provider have 24/7 client support both by email and phone;
  • Does the provider offer a money back guarantee, especially if you choose to switch companies;
  • Does the provider guarantee 99.5% or higher uptime;
  • Does the web hosting package offer 2 mega bites of band width or more which is enough for minisites unless you intend on having a lot of downloads of software, audio or video;
  • Does the provider offer sufficient disk space; 5 mega bites is ample for a minisite unless you have many pictures, videos or mp3;
  • Does the provider offer email accounts; for a mini site 10 is usually enough;
  • Does the web hosting package include PHP, Perl, Cgi-bin, SSL, MySQL, and Shopping Cart? If not what is the added monthly cost for these additional programming languages;
  • Does the provider offer both Windows 2000 and Linux server? Linux is cheaper and if you are not running Microsoft SQL server database, or Microsoft Active Server pages, then Linux server will almost certainly be fine;
  • Does the provider provide multiple domains or sub domains;
  • Does the provider offer a free domain;
  • Does the provider offer web design tools as well as the right to become an affiliate;
  • Does the provider offer various packages and are these packages competitive.

Keep in mind that having capable 24/7 support and a completely reliable provider is more important than saving a few dollars per month.

What Success Package Do You Need

Most economical plans include PHP and ASP. PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases. Since PHP scripts sit inside HTML documents, you do not need a special editor to create pages, but your server and package that you choose must support and include PHP. This scripting language is sufficient for building basic mini sites.

ASP stands for Active Server Pages and its technology enables you to make dynamic and interactive web pages.

The default scripting language used for ASP is VBScript, but you can also use JavaScript. ASP runs best on Windows 2000/XPPro and NT4. When you compare PHP with ASP you find the following:

  • PHP has inbuilt features as email from a web page and FTP;
  • ASP requires additional components to provide the same;
  • To run ASP programs you need IIS installed on a Window platform server, which is not free;
  • PHP programs run on Linux, which is free;
  • PHP generally uses MySQL, which is usually free;
  • ASP requires purchase of MySQL;
  • PHP runs on various platforms as, Linux, Windows, Unix and Solaris;
  • ASP runs on Windows platforms;
  • PHP runs faster than ASP.

For most minisites you will find that PHP is suffice.

If you plan to collect data from your visitors, having a CGI-Bin is useful. CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a directory of a web server where you can store programs.

Your Reliable Hosting Providers

When choosing a reliable hosting provider, "You are the person who has to decide. Whether you'll do it or toss it aside; You are the person who makes up you mind. Whether you'll lead or will linger behind. Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar. Or just be contented to stay where you are". Choose wisely.

Godaddy services GoogleCashReview.com and EZMoneyMakingMinisite.com.  Hostgator.com hosts BizProMembers.com, M-ProMarketing.com and RichJerk-Power.com. Both providers offer reasonably price competitive packages. The economy plan offered by Godaddy gives you the choice between using PHP or ASP with either Windows platform or Linux platform.

With Godaddy you can upgrade to the delux plan with either ASP or CGI. You can upgrade further to either PHP/PERL or ASP/Windows. Hostgator provides unlimited domains.

To put the above in perspective, both companies meet the criteria for selecting a reliable hosting provider, offer the success package you need, support excellent features, and are competitive web hosting providers. Both will protect the life source of your business.