Choosing Your Web Hosting Partner
Prior to designing your web site, you need to choose a web host. Not only can your web host offer valuable input on design methods and what you can expect from your site, but the choice of hosts affects the types of software you run on your site. For example, not every web host can run the shopping cart program you have in mind; and not every host is going to be able to make your special Microsoft FrontPage utilities work. To optimize your web site, choose your host wisely. The company providing you web hosting will be a business partner. First Things First: Your Rapport You have to click with your web host. If they talk over your head, or if they don’t answer your questions in a usable fashion, your business relationship is going to be strained. Their customer service must serve your purposes, not their schedules. If you need someone at 5 am to answer questions, your web hosting service must be able to provide it. If you’re not happy with them, your web site will suffer. Your hosting provider should be patient with all of your questions. They should answer you quickly and clearly, and they should follow up with you to ensure you understood the answer. In addition, they should be proactive in approach: if they see an issue along the road, or if they see a way to improve your web site, they should say something. A web hosting provider who just agrees with everything you say is not a good partner; the hosting provider who points out the flaws in your plans and tells you how to fix them is the perfect partner. Ask the Right Questions It’s not all up to them; you have to ask the right questions, too. Be certain you tell your web hosting provider what software you plan to use, how you plan to support and maintain your site, and how much traffic you expect to generate; if you don’t know the answers to any of these questions, ask your host how to find out. Also ask them to recommend a good service package for your needs: do you just need to be able to load pages on, or is there back-end work to integrate a database? Ask what’s going to happen if your web site is busier than your service allows for; ask what services your web hosting provider has that you might be able to get free or discounted. Also consider this: If you’re not sure which service package to get, get the one that’s slightly more than you need; it pays off in the end, and you can always downgrade. Be certain you talk to your web hosting provider about site architecture and allowable utilities (that’s things