In the inspired frenzy of creation a new website for your service, content, or product, the process of diligently inquiring about the available web hosting services that are out there may not seem like a top priority. Not only may the search for a suitable web hosting service be marginalized, but the prospect of searching for one may be daunting: what do you even look for? How do you know what services will suit your needs?

Choosing an appropriate web hosting service can radically ease the process through which your express your creative or entrepreneurial will. Browsing through web hosting review sites can give you the information you need, details on what to look for, and user reviews of the services, allowing you to choose an appropriate venue for hosting. Through reviews, you can find other users who have needs similar to your own and discover the ways they have used web hosting services that worked well, thus allowing you to to form reasoned expectations.

Reviews will generally consist of information regarding rates and pricing, reviews of customer and technical support, how much disc space and data transfer the company provides, any particular or unique services offered, rating by both members and staff, and any other comments that reviewer finds valuable. These reviews are an integral part of the search for an appropriate web hosting service; the web hosting website itself will only tell you so much information as well as only provided a one-sided and obviously biased account of their services. User-submitted reviews, however, give you an idea of how people are actually interacting with their services as well as their levels of satisfaction.

The Advanced American Media Project recently reported that the current state of the economy has driven businesses to search for the cheapest web hosting available -- a long list, given that the number of web hosting companies has increased in the last few years. However, the price alone doesn't necessarily reflect the best offer, depending on what services are actually being provided in exchange. For instance, if one company offers a lower price, but in return gives lower bandwidth for data transfer, you're not necessarily getting the best deal for your money.

Web hosting site reviews can help you by detailing information about services from the customer's point of view, without obscuring or overlooking details, and providing thoughtful comments on the company's actual ability to live up to their professed standards. For more information on individual companies, see our full list of web hosting reviews.

To read more about the economy's effect on web hosting sites, read the original article at The Advanced American Media Project

Tag: web hosting reviews ·

While you wouldn’t think it, the truth is that your web host is an important factor in determining the success or failure of your website. Granted, you may responsible for its content and maintenance and that it is your hard work and SEO techniques that have driven up the popularity of your site; but if your web host fails, all your efforts go down the drain in one big whoosh! So you could accurately say that your web host is sort of the foundation on which your site is built, and because the foundation is the most important aspect for the stability of any building, you must choose your host with care.

When you’re choosing a host for the first time, you don’t know how well your site will fare – the jury is yet to take the stand and the verdict is not even in the picture. But as the days go by and you’re able to perform all the standard tests and analyses, you know how much traffic your site generates, how efficient it is, how fast it loads, and how reliable the information provided is. And with all this information, you also begin to become more aware of the continuing viability your web host or lack of it.

If your site’s needs grow but your web host does not allow you the room to do so, it’s time to effect a change. The process of changing web hosts is sometimes trickier than finding one for the first time – now, you know exactly what your site needs and you cannot afford to make mistakes during the change because that would mean a loss in readership and consequently a slide in your popularity. Most webmasters are aware of all that they need to do to move their sites, but common mistakes keep cropping up every now and then. In general, when you’re moving your website to a new host, keep the following in mind:

• Don’t undertake the change on your own if you don’t have the technical expertise to carry it out. Don’t hesitate to ask for help if the change is absolutely necessary; if not, wait for awhile before you change hosts because the change is disruptive to the smooth functioning of your site.
• Don’t change hosts when your site is at its peak unless it is absolutely necessary; you’re going to end up losing visitors who don’t take too kindly to waiting for sites that are down.
• Find out if the new host will satisfy all your site’s existing needs and allow room for new ones that will definitely crop up over the course of time as your site grows and becomes more popular. Most webmasters check for future growth prospects but fail to see if their current needs are met (their mistake is that they assume they will be met).
• Don’t cancel your old webhost before ensuring that all your data has been moved to the new host. The entire site, with files, databases, photos and everything else, has to be completely in place and up and running before you can safely cancel your old account and delete everything that is associated with it. To be on the safe side, keep both running for a while, and if there are no glitches, delete the old account. It may be more expensive, but it’s worth the cost when your site is popular.

This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degrees. She welcomes your comments.

Tag: web hosts mistakes ·

HostPapa, Canada's leading web hosting provider, is 100% green. The company purchases 100% green renewable energy to power its data centre, web servers, office computers, laptops, and office space. HostPapa's philosophy is---why burden the world just because it requires electricity for its operations? So, the environmentally-friendly web host buys its energy from renewable green energy sources, such as wind and solar-powered energy, and is thus able to contribute positively to the environment. · read more (514 words)

So when will we review a web hosting provider at WebHostingSitesReviews.com? This depends on several factors in which the web host must meet most if not all.

First the hosting provider must have been in business for over a year and have at least several hundred active clients. These criteria would score a one out of ten in our Popularity rating category but, at least the company has been in business for a while and can handle multiple customers. 90 percent of companies that go out of business do so in the first year. We don't want to promote a company that could soon go out of business and leave our readers in a lurch.

A web hosting provider must also have a fairly good reputation on the internet. There reputation for business & billing practices, customer service and the actual hosting service must be above average. This means positive reviews on other legitimate web hosting review sites. There should also not be too many complaints from users on the popular web masters message boards. One thing I like to see at a web hosts website is a public accessible forum where the hosting company customers visit for support issues. This gives you a real incite on how good the actual product is and how knowledgeable and responsive customer support is. Speaking of customer support, there must also be a toll free phone line for clientsand it would be nice if it was available 24/7.

The feature set of the web host is important as well. They must offer plans that would appeal to most web site owners and they shouldn't try to steer new clients to plans not suited for them and their website.

Reliability is important and using old technology or outdated and potentially insecure software is a big no, no. The web hosting provider should also offer a backup service for the customer's data (hopefully free), backup power for the servers and redundant connections to the internet to insure the uptime of the website is at least 99.9 percent.

A 30 day money back guarantee is almost a necessity. Especially now days when many web hosting providers offer their hosting plans not monthly, but yearly. You can't always expect a potential customer to take a leap of faith without a way out. When you see a guarantee you know the company stands behind there service.
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As with all businesses you find companies that offer claims that seem to good to be true, web hosting is no exception. This can range from outright lies, exceptions listed in small print, too just minor annoyances on your part. The main thing to do to protect yourself is to read the Terms and Conditions of Use policies and to understand them. Most hosts display links to these policies at the bottom of their web pages and on the page where you actually sign up for a hosting plan. Other names exist for these policies and there may be a separate legal page for them as well.

With the below list of gotchas, I hope to explain more than a few things to watch out for when choosing a web hosting provider. · read more (845 words)

What's the difference between Windows and Linux or Unix web hosting? In this article we will answer this question by addressing four different points. These points includes Performance, Security, Compatibility and Price.

Performance

In our view performance between the two operating systems is similar. This can be taken further, when you consider what web service software, database software and any scripting languages you are using. Some of these software packages work better on Linux while others work better on a Windows platform. For the most part the systems are pretty evenly matched and this category should not be a concern for 99.9% of web site owners. Performance of the operating systems and added software packages become an issue when you are dealing with a web site with large amounts of traffic and you are using (or planning on using) multiple servers. Individuals and Businesses should be more worried about the type of web hosting plan, (shared, virtual or dedicated) than comparing performance between the two operating systems. · read more (711 words)

This article will explain in detail how Web Hosting Sites Reviews comes up with ratings for our reviews of web hosting providers. Currently our rating for a web host is divided into 6 categories. An equal weight is given to each category and when totaled and then divided by 6 gives you the overall percentage for that particular web host being reviewed. This rating process may change in the future, most likely the weight of certain categories may be made more prevalent than others. When and if we decided to do this we will update this article to reflect the changes. · read more (668 words)

Are you just starting a web site or thinking about what the process is? This Beginners Guide is designed to explain the process (in general terms) of designing a web site to promoting your finished web site once it is online, and all the steps in between. If you are unsure of certain terms or need some more information on a concept please refer to our Glossary. This article is an overview. More detailed articles are (and will be) available for certain topics talked about in this guide. Links to these articles will be listed in the topics below. · read more (919 words)