Personal Web Hosting - What Do You Need?

We’ve asked around to ascertain what people actually look for in a Hosting company and it was actually very surprising and offers a lot of food for thought when looking around regardless of whether you’re a complete novice or a seasoned website creator

Cost $$$
One of the easiest ways to get affordable web hosting is to sign up for more than a single year, lots of hosting companies offer affordable web hosting when you sign up for 2 or 3 years, sometimes the saving can amount to around a 20% saving which over the course of 3 years is actually quite a saving.

Support Services
what do you need from your personal web hosting service in terms of support? Someone to help each step of the way, or someone to speak to when your website is down?

Whatever you need from your websites hosting company a good after sales service is really a must, its one thing to have website downtime, but not being able to contact anyone to find out what is going on makes the situation much worse.



Downtime, reliability
We’d all love to have the next great thing in terms of websites, maybe the next eBay, Twitter or YouTube, but without a reliable service it simply won’t happen, visitors will just go elsewhere. One thing I have learned about visitors from website statistics is, if they don’t find what they need, and quickly they will go elsewhere, so when choosing a personal web hosting service it must be reliable, as even an average site will beat even the best website if it’s using an unreliable service.

Website extras
Before signing up to any website hosting package decide on exactly what you need, this could mean a backend database such as MySql, other website add-ins, large amounts of email space and multiple addresses, or even a complete package that allows you to have multiple domains if you intend to run multiple sites, all of which will save money.

Easy to use service
When choosing a personal web hosting company having an easy to use admin page, email and even site setup makes such as difference, it gives you the chance to get on with actually designing and writing content for your site or blog rather than having to spend time configuring the settings for it in the first place, I remember when I first started and having to do everything totally manually was very tough and a real learning curve.

Windows or Unix, why does it matter?
Thinking you don’t know anything about UNIX so you’re going to use Windows for your web hosting? Wait, firstly you don’t need to know anything about UNIX when it comes to the hosting side as this will be managed by your hosting company, and secondly PHP and MySQL which are the backbones to many successful sites use UNIX and are easy to install and manage.

Lastly if your going to create a Blog one of the easiest to install and manage is Wordpress, this runs over UNIX, PHP and MySQL

 Automatic Hosting Renewal
This is really down to personal preference, it’s true that most websites never make it past one or two pages and then its left alone and never used again, but when the end of the first year approaches do you really want to keep the website? Most people sadly don’t, but they still end up getting charged for it as many hosting companies automatically re-bill you each year, and unless you notify them before hand you can do nothing to stop this.

So when you sign up for a hosting package make sure they will not do this without your permission.

Website expansion
If your building a website for an existing business make sure you allow for expansion, if your website cannot handle the volume of traffic it means lost visitors it’s as simple as that. It’s a fact that if visitors cannot access a website fast or find what they want quickly they will leave.

Make sure you’re chosen hosting company can offer extra bandwidth or dedicated server facilities.

Adding email
Does your hosting company offer email as part of the hosting package? They should, also check to make sure it supports common protocols such as POP3, which means you can setup email through common applications such as Microsoft Outlook and view email locally as opposed to having to be online all the time.

Another nice feature, although not vital is webmail, so you can check your email from literally anywhere on any computer with an internet connection.

Other tips to help choosing a personal web hosting company is right for you

Thinking of building a website? Why not create a web business – more on how to create a web business, including, choosing domains, creating content, using keywords, plus tools to actually check pages for you to make sure they have the best chance of web success

We all want affordable personal web hosting , but what’s the real cost, find out what how to get the most for your money in terms of complete web hosting packages that really do offer everything from the ground up to help your site become a success.

Building a website to generate an income – think that you could never build a website to earn money? Too difficult? Don’t have experience? Find out how easy it actually is for just about anyone to do this.

Find out how to get more visitors to your website or blog – checkout our help and tips to help get your website noticed, and get more visitors to your site.

Website not listed in Google? Stuck in the Google sandpit? Find out some easy ways to help your website get listed and indexed faster in Google

Easy ways to get personal web hosting & your own pro competitive website – If you thought building a website or blog would be too difficult or you’re just wanted something up and running already, why not consider a readymade website? There is a big market for sites now, and sometimes it works out cheaper as well.

Maximizing advertising – Does your website get lots of visitors and yet earn little income? Did you know ad placement and look makes such as difference to the earning a website can make.

How much traffic does your website generate? Where does it come from? What are the most popular pages? How long do people stay on your site? Which ads generate the most income? If you don’t know the answer to these questions you could be losing money. Getting some form of website statistics running on your website can help you so see where your website is going right and wrong.

Without website optimization you could have the best product or greatest looking website in the world, but literally no visitors and very little income.

For more on personal web hosting tips

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