Personal Blog Income

So you have taken the plunge and decided that you want to host your blog or website on your own domain. Good for you, it’s going to allow you a lot more freedom and you can truly establish your own identity.

With any new venture there are always risks and finding good web hosting is no exception. There are good hosts and then there are the rest which can be bad to worse to downright terrible. With this in mind I have created 14 tips for helping to find a good webhost and avoiding the bad ones and also a couple of recommendations:

1. Always shop around for the best deal and features in a webhost. It is largely a buyer’s market and there may be a better deal around the next corner
2. Always try and find out what existing users are saying about their webhosting company in their user forums (if they have them) and by doing searches in your preferred search engine which may highlight problems or issues the company doesn’t want you to know about
3. Never trust ratings or recommendations from so called hosting review sites. Most are little more than paid advertising by the relevant companies with the best reviews and rankings going to the highest bidder, not the best host like they claim to be.
4. Always select a hosting plan that matches your level of expertise. Especially for beginners setting up applications on their site including blogs can be a battle. Many webhosts offer simplified or one button set up of common applications that can include WordPress, PHP Nuke and mailing lists
5. Most companies offer some form of demo facility for their accounts. Give the demo a good work out and make sure it does what YOU want it to and offers the features that you want it to.
6. Never sign up for a long term commitment to webhosting. While you can save money that way, you can also get burned by web hosting that isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While it might cost more, payment by the month can save you money in the long run and gives you flexibility that you may wish to utilise in the future.
7. Establish what level of support the hosting company offers and also if there is any additional cost for using support. I have encountered a few hosting providers who cut corners on cost by charging when something goes wrong. In most cases doing searches it seems like things went wrong more often on those providers.
8. After you have established what support they have, test it. If they have a number to call see if they answer it as its surprising how many 24 hour support numbers never get answered out of hours.
9. Take a look at what the web hosting company offers. I’ve encountered web hosting companies who state amongst other services that they offer professional web design services, yet when you look at their website there are broken links and it looks like it was slapped together in 10 minutes in FrontPage.
10. Some webhosting companies offer a free domain name with their accounts. Be very careful and establish who actually owns the domains as in the past people have utilised “their” free domain and made it a success only to find unscrupulous webhosts misappropriating the domain name. Whoever is the technical contact has control of the domain. It is far safer to buy a domain name at a domain name registrar and point it at the domain name servers (DNS) of your chosen host.
11. Always trust your instincts. If the offer is too good to true then usually it is. Offers of unlimited space or bandwidth usually prove to be anything but when it gets down to trying to make use of the promised capacity.
12. Ensure that should you need to, it’s an easy process to upgrade your account quickly and easily.
13. Don’t feel constrained to shop for webhosting only in your country. If you go international then you may save big money as the internet knows no borders
14. And finally, if your webhosting company is failing to deliver on what you require, never be afraid to move along. It is after all a buyer’s market

I am sure there are many more tips the voice of experience out there could add but it’s a good start. As promised I said I would also include some recommendations.

For the record I use Hostgator on a shared hosting plan. They serve my needs and for that i pay $9.95 a month for 5gb of space and 75gb of traffic. Also i can host unlimited domains on my site (at last count 31!). And the best part, for a relatively inexperienced user like myself they have the cpanel control panel that allows for the easy management of my account without having to get into the hard stuff. Their support in the rare times that i have required it has been first rate every time.

Bluehost is a company i have heard some good things about. I used to be with one of the companies that now make up BlueHost and it was some of the best hosting i have had. Like Hostgator they use easy to use software which means installing blog platforms like WordPress is easy.

There are many other great webhosts out there so give me a shout if you know a good one.