Web hosting services offer a variety of features. If you’ve never looked at web hosting services before, this list can get extremely confusing. You may not know all of these terms and are not sure what you will need. Here are some tips and advice.
What should a web host do?
The web hosting servers should keep you informed. They should have told you that they have something for server protection and power outages and that they back up the server regularly. To be safe, you should also keep yours. If they have problems, they will use your backup, but if you have problems with the backup, you will want to have your own. The best web hosting services will have an uptime of 99.9%, 100% is not realistic.
Do you offer support?
Talking to a real human being on Friday night to tell them that your website is down is much more comforting than sending an email that may not be read until Monday. Email is good for some support questions, but you also want a human who can speak English or your language.
Do you allow multiple websites?
While you may only have one website now, you may have more later. Go ahead and get the plan that allows multiple domains. Note that many hosting services will give you a free domain name with your hosting, you want to use it as a redirect. At some point you might decide to change the web servers, the current web server may or may not publish your domain name. Even if they promise to publish it, they don’t say when. So be sure to get your domain name elsewhere.
Do you want common?
You want common features in web hosting so that others can help when you need help. Most of the hosting services have cPanel, which is a fairly easy to use and very common control panel. You also want a File Manager, most have FTP, File Transfer Protocol. These allow you to upload files, images, and other things directly to your server and website. This is how you can upload files to your website.
It is easy?
Popular scripts are usually easy to install. The best web hosting services provide these simple scripts that eliminate the need to download files, edit codes, and upload the codes one more time. The most common easy-to-install services are Fantastico and Simple Scripts. Fantastico offers a bit more control, so it is best used. While installation is not “simple with one click,” as some setup programs say, it is much simpler than the other way around.