How To Select A Web Host For Your Niche Site

The success of your niche website is going to depend to a large degree on the quality of web hosting your choose for your website. In much the same way a store owners success is dependant on the stores location, so your choice of a web host will affect the success of your niche site.

Don't be fooled into thinking decisions should be cost related... you can get very expensive hosting from John Doe in Timbucktwo but his servers are old, can only handle limited traffic and the link between him and the outside world is shaky at best.

You can set up your web hosting in any country in the world, there are no international boundaries on the internet. This gives you the opportunity to shop around and find the best web hosting to suit your circumstances. When conducting your research, these are the points to investigate:

~Does the web host operate with at least a 99% uptime?

A quality web host will use generator backup in case of power outages and they will also have redundant back-up systems so that in the event any of the Internet connections get interrupted, an alternate Internet connection will take over?

~How many domains can you host on the one hosting account?

Many web hosts will only allow one, others allow unlimited domains. If the web host only allows one domain, do they allow separate I.P. addresses for each domain hosted?

Many spam related filters will block anything from an I.P. address that has been reported for spam violations. Most small websites are hosted on a shared server (one computer can host many different websites) and these are all hosted under one I.P. address. If anybody on your server gets into trouble for spamming, you could pay the penalty because of the I.P. block that will be imposed. If your website has its own I.P. address, you will be unaffected.

~How much bandwidth are you allowed?

Bandwidth is the amount of internet traffic going through your website. If you have e-books, audio files or video files that your customers download, you are going to need a fairly large bandwidth allowance.

The question to ask is what happens if you exceed your bandwidth allowance? Does the host automatically increase your fee and put you into the next hosting category or do they just stop showing your website until the next financial month?

~How much disk space are you allowed?

It is pointless purchasing web hosting only to discover after adding a few new pages to your website that you have run out of disk space on the server to host your website.

Remember that pictures, e-books, audio files and video files take up considerable space on a hard drive.

~What sort of customer support does the web host supply?

Do they respond within 24 hours? The whole point about hosting is you want your website online 24/7 so if something goes wrong and you report it, how quickly do they respond and correct the problem?

A good web host will have phone and email support, the better ones also use live chat.

~Is MySQL available?

If your web site is going to store a lot of data, for example in a reciprocal link directory or you are going to use a forum you will need MySQL which is an extremely powerful and very popular database program.

How many MySQL databases are you allowed? Some hosts only allow one database per domain, while others allow unlimited databases.

~Is a control panel available?

Most web hosts allow their clients to manage their website hosting through a control panel known as cPanel. This allows you to control all aspects of your hosting including:

- email accounts

- MySQL databases

- Passwords

- Sub-domains

- Backups

~Does the web host support FrontPage?

FrontPage is a popular software program used for designing and building web pages. Does the web host support FrontPage, and if you're currently using FrontPage, do they support the same version you're using.

Don't just sign up with the first hosting service you come across, do a little research first. One very good way of discovering the best web host is to ask the question on a few of the more popular forums. You'll soon get the good and bad about any web host you're interested in.

Finally, price is not a good selection method. The old premise that expensive means good quality doesn't apply here. There are plenty of good reliable web hosts that charge a surprisingly low monthly fee.