The story of Amanda Jones, 109, a Democrat for 70 years and voted early for the country’s first black presidential nominee, make me think – being a blogger, if I were to vote for my blog hosting partner, what would be my criteria.
What to look into potential blog hosting partner
Operating System and programming tools: Using Linux as Operation System if Possible
The best operation system for a WordPress blog hosting is Linux, which is cheap, reliable and also very fast. You have no need to pay more to host your blog in an Windows environment.
Your website should be uploaded through secure servers using the latest operating system. Most web hosts run on a UNIX based operating system, usually Linux or BSD, supported by various web applications like ASP, .NET, MS SQL, SBS for running your website. For these, you need a Window based host.
Reliability: 99.9% Up time Guarantee
It would be good to find a web hosting company which can promise you with 99.9% up time. Say in case of a major power failure or server breakdown, its important to have a web hosting provider, that assures you a guaranteed uptime and running.
No matter you blog for personal interests or business, a reliable blog hosting is always very important to you because all those who consider to spend their valuable time in visiting your website are most valuable. Besides, if your traffic ranking is high, you are likely to suffer potential losses even if your host servers are down for a few hours.
Security and backup
If you have an E-commerce website, security is most important for safe transaction and to minimize losses. Even otherwise, it is important that your web host can monitor any kind of fraudulent activity and provide secure solutions to prevent hacking your personal accounts and of course, data backups in case of any kinds of technical failures.
Disk space
Graphics and multimedia would eat up a lot of your space, so evaluate your own needs first.Therefore access the amount of storage space you need versus the amount of storage provided to you by your web hosting service provider. Make your own research.
Stay away, in fact run as far as possible from hosting companies that promises you ‘unlimited’ space and ‘unlimited’ bandwidth. However you will also come across the term “unmetered” and there is a difference between unlimited & unmetered
Unlimited means there is virtually no limit, which is frankly impossible. Unmetered means that you will not be billed for any extra bandwidth being transferred but you still technically have a limit depending on the type of port connection you are on.
cPanel
cPanel is the most popular web hosting control panel being an icon-based interface and the learning curve is practically a straight line. It will save you a lot of time to use your web host.
I have had the luxury of using three main control panels before : Plesk, Direct Admin & Cpanel. Out of the 3 listed above i can say that i have found that Cpanel is the control panel for me.
One click to Setup WordPress
You can download WordPress installation scripts, follow the guide, and get your blog setup by yourself.
But if the web hosting company use cPanel, cPanel already bundled with Fantastico. Fantastico is a commercial script library which automates the installation of web applications to a website. All Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel, therefore installing WordPress is very easy.
Pricing and support
Generally, before you buy a product or a service you would like to compare prices and read reviews. Low pricing need not necessarily mean bad service, sometimes you good get services at affordable rates. Do your homework thoroughly to keep your site up and running while you need it.
A courteous and professional support definitely will be very helpful in your blog hosting. From my personal experience, I would like to choose a web hosting company with live chat support which is much better than email or toll-free phone support.
Money-back guarantees
You can have your own pick. In general, web hosts offer 30, 60 or 90 day money back guarantees for their first time customer. Some web host allow you to cancel your membership anytime with a prorated refund.
I think based on this criteria, it will be enough to rate or vote for your blog hosting partner. Which criteria is important for you? And would you vote your blog hosting partner.
Popularity: 4% [?]
