HOSTING HOTLINE

Having a reliable hosting company for your website should be a top priority for all webmasters. Simply put, time is money, and if your website is not up and running properly as close to 100% of the time as possible, you lose money.

It’s a little surprising that there haven’t been more hosting panels for Internext in the past, considering that every single website requires hosting to function.HOSTING HOTLINE

Having a reliable hosting company for your website should be a top priority for all webmasters. Simply put, time is money, and if your website is not up and running properly as close to 100% of the time as possible, you lose money.

It’s a little surprising that there haven’t been more hosting panels for Internext in the past, considering that every single website requires hosting to function. Everything else by and large can be done in-house by the webmaster, but when it comes to hosting, make the wrong decision, and your business could possibly crash and burn before too long.

Sitting on this particular panel were some well-known and respected veterans in our industry. Dr. Douglas Wicks, the Director of Sales for Cave Creek Hosting (www.Cavecreek.com), one of the largest hosting companies on the Internet; David DiBartolomeo, the Chief Technical Officer of Candid Hosting (www.candidhosting.com), and who also personally ran his first BBS back in 1984; and Tony Morgan, the Owner of National Net (www.natnet.com), which has been around since 1996, spoke on this panel. All three of these men are considered leaders in our industry, and work for very respectable companies.

Dr. Wicks opened with answering the basic question, “What do all Webmasters need to look for in finding a host”, and it was generally agreed upon by all panelists that everything always points back to customer support. Does your host provide you with a live person on the phone 24/7? Are your emails responded to in a timely manner? Do you feel that your host properly answers your questions and has your best interests in mind, and is fully staffed? If you answered no to any of these questions, it’s time to find a new host. Morgan quipped, “If you call your hosting company for customer service and the owner answers the phone… quit using them immediately.”

Wicks followed with several technical questions you need to ask yourself, and DiBartolomeo went into greater detail on each. Does your hosting company have a solid Internet connectivity foundation? How many pipe lines does the company run on? Does the hosting company have redundancy, meaning that if there is a power failure and a carrier goes down, will another one take over so that all of the websites running on it will stay up and running? What is the company’s Internet up time percentage? And of course the question on every Webmaster’s mind – how much will all of this cost me?

Before doing anything, you should always consult other webmasters about their experiences. Ask around and get as many opinions as possible. DiBartolomeo offered that you should maybe think about asking a monitoring service to check out some of a particular hosting company’s biggest clients to get an idea of whether all of the previous questions are satisfied, and if the company is able to deliver what they claim.

Essentially there are four hosting options that a webmaster can use for their websites: Free, Virtual, Dedicated and Co-Located. Free hosting, everyone warned, is not really free, in that free hosting companies are only “trying to get all of your traffic, otherwise, what would the hosting company benefit out of it?” The panel generally advised against using a free host in that chances are it will make more money off the webmaster rather than vice versa. Virtual hosting is a “good way to get your foot in the door,” but on the downside, you are essentially sharing servers with several other websites, and in the event of a spike in traffic for even just a few websites sharing your server, traffic can bottleneck, and slow down service for everyone. It was unanimous that Dedicated and Co-located hosting are the best solutions, but generally are most expensive. With Dedicated hosting, the hosting company puts you on your own leased server at their location, and with Co-located hosting, you own your own server and can have it located wherever you like.

It was also generally agreed amongst the panelists that you should also go for the best possible hosting solution that you can afford, and not just settle for the cheapest. “Upgrade as soon as you can.” You get what you pay for essentially, and if paying extra means paying for extra backup in the form of redundancy in customer service representatives, processes, backup and servers, then it would behoove you and your business to shell out the extra cash.

As far as what hosting package is right for you, depends largely on your type of site (paysite, TGP, amateur, toplist, etc.), how much content you give away, and what kind of traffic you are getting. Determining the MB/sec. of bandwidth that you will need to purchase as well as choices of hosting packages should be something that you consult with your potential hosting company, and also something you can ask around to other webmasters with similar sites to see what they are paying. Also consider that how well you market and promote your site will have a lot to do with your traffic and potential bandwidth costs.

Morgan stated, “Don’t believe it if your site is down and when you call the hosting company they tell you that they are under attack.” A reputable hosting company will have all of their security measures set up well, and will be able to handle something major like the recent Code Red virus. In actuality, password hackers are one of the biggest problems that good hosting companies face. Just always keep an eye on your stats, and to avoid getting stuck with high bandwidth bills in the event of a hacker or a password trader, be sure to cancel that password and deny access with it.

LAJ is the YNOT Network Director of Communications.