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Newbie
Webmaster Starter Kit
Domains &
Hosting
- Who's Minding Your Site For You.
Quite
simply, choosing the right host can mean the difference between success
and failure in this business so it is vitally important to choose your
host with care. You need one that is reliable, can provide you with tech
support 24/7 and is not going to charge you an arm and two legs every
month.
You
also need to know about domain names and how to use them to achieve maximum
utilisation. The following notes should help you.
Paid
Hosting - Are All Paid Hosts Created Equal?
Unfortunately
not all paid hosts are worth using and
Choosing
the right host can be very difficult. When you arrive at their website
there is no way that most webmasters can tell if the business is well
established or not. All hosting companies want to give you the impression
that they are well established and can offer wonderful technical support
24/7 and many of the sites leave you with the impression that you are
dealing with a very big business.
Unfortunately
while that is true of some there are many hosts whose business consists
of nothing more than a single server that you would be sharing with numerous
other people and their 24/7 tech support consists of one person who may
or may not even be in the same locality as the server. Even the smallest
adult site needs hosting that offers genuine 24/7/365 technical support.
When your site goes down at 3am on a Sunday morning you want the problem
fixed immediately, not at 8am on Monday morning.
Another
important point that you must be aware of is that not all hosts are prepared
to accept adult sites onto their servers. Adult sites can place a heavy
burden on a host's resources and not everyone is prepared to handle such
high traffic sites. Most hosts will clearly indicate whether or not they
accept adult sites in their terms of service so always check the TOS and
if in doubt contact the host and make it clear that the sites that they
would be hosting for you are adult oriented.
You
will see that most hosts offer a wide range of plans that are based on
the amount of bandwidth you might use in a month. For most newbies a plan
that offers 5gig of transfer in a month is adequate but this will depend
on the type of sites that you want to build. We'll talk more about that
later but until then here are some more points to think about as you choose
your host.
1.
Make sure that you fully understand the terminology that you will be faced
with before you even hit the hosting link over on Porn
Resource to shop for a host. Terms such as virtual hosting, disk space
and overages and the costs involved are of vital importance to you and
you need to understand why you may need Front Page extensions (I hope
you have enough sense not to use Front Page) and why a plan with CGI,
PHP, online stats and raw logs may be better than one without. Make sure
you know the difference between a Unix and an NT server and which is better
for your situation.
2. Don't
be influenced by price alone, if you want to spend peanuts then all you
are going to get are monkeys. Good quality service comes at a price and
hosting is the absolute foundation of your online business. On the other
hand don't spend too much, there are some very high quality hosts out
there who give great service at a very reasonable price.
3. Make
yourself a short list of likely hosting companies and then start asking
for opinions from other webmasters. Everyone has had problems with hosts
at one time or another and webmasters have very long memories when it
comes to hosting so you will get plenty of input on good and bad hosts.
Be sure to listen to what you are told, and if an experienced webmaster
suggests one thing and a flock of newbies suggest something else then
listen to the guy with the experience.
4. When
you have talked to other webmasters about those hosting companies that
are on your short list its time to contact the hosting companies direct
and talk to them. See if someone really does answer the phone, ask them
to explain their hosting plans to you and make sure that you understand
all the details of your plan.
Hosting
is a vital part of you business, make sure you understand all the minute
detail and how it will apply to you and when you have all that information
in front of you make your decision and sign-up.
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