tips for selecting a web host

Which Operating System for Your Website? A tough question...but here a few pointers.

Windows - Unless you have a very specific requirement for hosting your Landing Pages on a Windows Server, I would consider one of the different Operating Systems listed below. The only time to strongly consider Windows as a base operating system is when you are hosting a game server. The historical security and reliability concerns with Windows continue to give me pause.

Linux - The most popular operating system for web hosting, Linux provides the most popular web server, Apache and a host of services. A typical configuration includes the LAMP setup, (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). These base services provide practically any functionality you might require in a web server.

Solaris - Solaris has been a traditional favorite for business data center hosting. In the past few years, the hosting duties have been supplanted by Linux. Only choose this option if you are an experienced System Administrator.

FreeBSD - A very stable and secure operating system. Fewer security issues than all the other operating system listed. If you are just hosting HTML pages, there is no reason to avoid FreeBSD.

Don't Forget to test your host's support. Before you select a host, call their support line during different times of the day and check the average response time. The objective is to make sure they answer the phone in a timely manner day and night. Try a simple email test as well with a generic question and check the response time for their reply.

Watch Out For Unlimited Plans. Some plans sound amazing on paper. Unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage offers will typically have a caveat about consuming too much server RAM or CPU. If you begin to truly take advantage of the “unlimited” bandwidth or storage, you will usually find you account terminated for using too many server resources. The interesting fact is that their reason for termination is not untrue. No piece of hardware can use increasing bandwidth without using more and more system resources. These caveats in the unlimited plans typically act as a limit to the bandwidth you can use.

The average website will require 50-100 Megabytes of space and 2-4 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. If you are serving pure html files then an unlimited plan can have some value, but if your content is database driven, an unlimited bandwidth plan will drive system resources through the roof and could trigger a system resource use clause in your hosting contract.

Don't make "unlimited" plans your only criteria, search for what you need from a price and feature perspective and you won't find your hosting account terminated based on a mis-perception.

Should you pay in advance? Most of the super low price, too good to be true, how do they make money web hosting plans have another common feature. To get the low monthly rate, you must pay in advance. Usually, you pay one year in advance. There are two sides to the pay in advance plans.

On the positive side, paying in advance is one less monthly cost to monitor and a single payment of  less than $100 for a year of hosting does drive a nice low monthly rate.

But beware of the possible negatives. If the hosting company you have researched still turns out to be a horrible service provider, you are left holding a bill for hosting that has no value for you. If your web host provides bad servers, slow bandwidth and days of downtime you are still stuck holding the bill. Once the money is paid, it may actually be cheaper to write it off as a learning lesson than to try to get the hosting fee back.

My recommendation...test the support and sales email and make sure they are responsive. If they work with you and are friendly, then advance payment can get you a great bargain for your web hosting.

Content provided by the Affiliate Landing Page Handbook.