Automatic installation

Most web hosting companies let you host a blog, so the important thing is to find the web hosting service that has automation in place that lets you set up a blog with only a few clicks. I have found that the best web hosts make it very easy and quick to set up a WordPress blog, even under a couple of minutes for the best.

Fantastico

The best blog web hosting companies use Fantastico or a custom script to help you install a blog like WordPress. It does all the setup for you, and the only thing you have to do is fill in some fields like domain name, folder name for the install, admin username and password, and contact e-mail. The script does the rest.

Backup

There are few things worse then losing your blog to hardware failure, a hacker, or by mistakingly deleting your files, and not having a recent backup. Look for a blog host that does daily backups for you, and that will help you in restoring your blog if disaster happens.

Bandwidth and storage

If you expect a lot of traffic and/or have a lot of blog posts, choose a web host that features high bandwidth and storage in the package you purchase. Unlimited is fine, but read my articles on unlimited hosts and pick one that has received good reviews.

 
Bandwidth you say?

What does actually bandwidth mean? It is the a term typically used to describe the amount of information (or data) that your web site sends to your visitors over a spesific amount of time, usually a month. Every time a vistor comes to your site, the web server sends the front page, with all the images and text, to the browser of the visitor. If you have two images that are each 0.05 mb, just there you have used 0.10 mb of bandwidth for that page view. Add up all the page views and you will have your bandwidth usage. Now, some web hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth, but can they actually deliver unlimited?

Unlimited, endless, unrestricted, bandwidth?

For starters, there is no such thing as “unlimited” bandwidth, strictly speaking. If there was, all web sites in the world could be run through the same internet backbone connection. Unlimited, in the most formal use of the word, means unlimited, endless, unrestricted, bandwidth.

Secondly, at what point does your bandwidth usage result in the server you are on being over loaded? Long before “unlimited”, that’s for sure. Think about it, if Google were to sign up for a $7.99 web hosting account, with unlimited bandwidth and storage, the web hosting company would have to shut down business the second Google went online on their server (if such a server were to exist).

Is it unethical?

So, the people discussing the use of the term Unlimited Bandwidth often argue that it is unethical to use a term they actually can’t deliver on. I disagree with this argument, as the term is not implied to be read literally.

My opinion is that it is not unethical per say. The customer usually reads the term in context of the price they are paying, and type of hosting they are purchasing. It is also stated in the terms of use what you can expect to be able get out of your account. Slapping an Unlimited Bandwidth sign on a dedicated server offer, however, is completely different then on a shared, small business, hosting account. With the former you would reasonably expect to be able to utilize as much bandwidth as the dedicated server can handle, and with the latter you would reasonably expect to utilize as much bandwidth as the shared server account can handle, relative to the other accounts on the server.

Web hosts better provide a lot of bandwidth

And that is where a reasonable argument lays. If you are a web host that offers unlimited bandwidth, you better be sure to be able to handle a web site that actually has a respectable amount of traffic. Too many customers of shared hosting have complained about their site being taken down by their web host the minute they actually get any traffic worth talking about. No notice, just wham, down. Other have received a notice, either before or after, but that really doesn’t cut it.

Choose a web host that helps you when your site grows

The economics of running a web hosting company that offers shared web hosting means that you need to place many accounts/web sites on the same server. Now, if you are at a web host that doesn’t have a plan for what they are going to do with the web sites that get 1000, 2000, 10.000, 100.000 page views per day, other than shutting them down, expect to get shut down if your site is successful. I am not going to opinonate too specific what I think a web hosting company should offer a shared hosting customer in terms of daily hits, as there are many variables involved, like size of pages, back-end processing, etc. However, they should definitely go to great lengths to ensure that a customer is able to host even a large and popular web site on a shared hosting account. That is, if they advertise with unlimited bandwidth.

Related posts:

1. Good web host

http://www.hostgator.com

HostGator was the first web hosting company I signed up for this year, after starting up my online business efforts again after 7 years working “offline”.
 
 
 

Background

I have around 10 sites hosted on one account (business plan) with HostGator, and have been with them for around one month. I can’t remember exactly why I chose to go with them, but most likely I read reviews on sites like Good Web Hosting that were positive and gave them a shot.
 
 
 
Click here for HostGator plan details

Sign up

Sign up was quick and easy, and account details were sent right away, with instant access to the account.
 
Click here for HostGator plan details

Control Panel

HostGator uses the CPanel control panel, which seems to be industry standard these days. Although this control panel is a little clobbered down by options, it is extremely easy to use once you get to know it. Everything from adding add-on domains, to setting up e-mail, is one click away.

Setting up a wordpress blog or phpBB forum is handled through Fantastico, which CPanel integrates, and only requires a few clicks.

All in all, I have become very fond of CPanel and will probably never want to use anything else!
 
Click here for HostGator plan details

Support

I have had one support ticket submitted so far, with 2-3 correspondenses. Each of the follow-ups, and the original ticket, were answered within 2 hours. I find this to be extremely good response time for a company this big.

Click here for HostGator plan details

Server Speed

Server speed seems to be very good. To get better speed/response time you would have to go for a dedicated server. I will be monitoring my sites and post updated findings in the months to come.
 
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Uptime

I have not experienced any downtime with HostGator, but as a disclaimer I am not actively monitoring my sites. To put it this way, if I experience any downtime, I will post it here!
 
Click here for HostGator plan details

Price

I am on the Business plan and am hosting around 10 sites on it at this moment, and am paying $14.95 per month. This adds up to $1.49 per domain per month, which is just terrific! I plan to add probably 5-10 more domains on this account, and the per domain price will then be even lower.
 
Click here for HostGator plan details

Total Score

Ok, I have to say that I am a very happy customer with HostGator. They have a feel to them that I usually only experience with smaller hosts. This meaning, big host with 100.000+ customer usually suck! Smaller hosts are usually better with customer service, speed, price, etc, but have the unfortunate risk of “blowing up”. With HostGator you I am at one of the largest web hosts in the world, but still get the ”small host”, personal, quick and reliable, service. I definately recommend them!

Total Score: 5 out of 5

Click here to go to HostGator

Comment!

Have a good or bad experience with this host? Post a comment below describing your dealings with this company.

A web host company really only consists of two services (from the customers point of view) and this is where the bad are differentiated from the good web host companies:

• web hosting
• support

Everything else usually goes on behind the scene. Your credit card gets charged each month, the techies at the good web hosting service stop a network attack, you really don’t care as long as your web site is up and running, and that your questions are answered or problem resolved when you contact their support department.

From the web hosting companies perspective, these are obviously the most expensive services to provide to the customer also.

Web hosting

The most common form of web hosting today is referred to as “shared” web hosting. Basically, all web pages that exist on the internet are stored on a  hard drive, on some computer with network access. A web hosting company usually has they’re own storage facility (data center) where these computers are connected to the Internet.

These computers, or “servers” as they are called, can host anywhere from 1 to several hundreds of web sites, depending on how powerful the servers are. Generally speaking, if the server hardware/software is cheap (old) and/or poorly set up, few sites can be hosted. If the server hardware/software is expensive (new) and/or efficiently set up, more sites can be hosted. But of course, the most crucial factors in being able to host few/many web sites is the traffic to the web sites, and what kind of content/services it is offering. High traffic and/or resource intense content (for example streamed video) and services can quickly place a strain on the server.

Where the web hosting company might cut on quality

Now, based on the above information about how a web site is hosted, you can see that it is in the interest of the web hosting company to place as many web sites on a computer/server as possible, so that the expense for hardware, software and man-hours is kept low. This gives us two ends of the spectrum with regards to quality:

Bad web hosting

• Places too many web sites (customers) on the same server. In other words, the server is overloaded. This can result in down time due to the server not being able to serve your web site to your visitors when the server is most busy. It can also result in down time because the server needs to be rebooted often.
• Does not handle instances well when there are specific web sites on a server that are utilizing most of the resources and creating problems for the other customer. This can happen even if the web hosting company has a policy to not place too many web sites on the same server. They need to actively monitor and take action when needed.

Good hosting

• Only places an amount of web sites that the server can truly handle. The good web hosts have a nice buffer between what the server can handle and the number of web sites, so that they have time to handle growing web sites that need to be moved (see next point). 
• Once they see a trend that a web site on a server might jeopordize the server performance through increased resource utilization, the good web hosting company will ask the customer to upgrade/move to a server that can handle the traffic. They monitor, and take action when need be, all the while helping the customer that needs to move so that the effort is minimal.

There are of course other factors that can degrade the quality of the web hosting service, like network problems and outages, small network connections to “internet providers”, the servers burning up, etc. However, it is my opinion that most of the problems customers with a “bad” web hosting company experiences is due to overcrowded servers. That and bad support, which I will discuss in part 2 of Good Web host: From the web hosting companies perspective.

Related posts:

1. Unlimited Bandwidth Hosting