After several years online I have signed up with some web hosting services that were terrible, and some that were great. What was the difference?
First, the level of customer service made a big difference. If they do not list their phone number where you can reach them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, then do not even consider that company.
This is especially important for people who are putting up their first site. You are going to have questions, and the best way to get them answered is by talking to someone on the phone. It is more difficult to communicate with live chat or by e-mail.
The second biggest difference is the choices available. Do they offer shared, dedicated, reseller and virtual accounts? Before choosing a web hosting service you need to decide which of these you need.
If you plan to put up one or two sites and do not expect millions of visitors a day, then a shared server is fine. If you want to be able to put up a number of sites, or perhaps want to sell space in your account, then a reseller account is what you need.
If you expect to get millions of visitors a day then you will want to get a dedicated or a virtual private server. These are much more expensive then reseller or shared accounts, but they provide the resources you need to handle millions of hits each day.
Third, the services provided are extremely important. Do not sign up with a company that does not include services such as Fantastico, statistics packages, and the option to upgrade to more space and bandwidth at any time.
I have seen some web hosting services that do not even provide access (via cpanel) to more than a few programs. Be sure to sign up with a company that offers a cpanel that has a wide variety of services, such as web mail, ecommerce, Fantastico, MySQL Database, and more.
You might not understand each of these, but as you get more experienced, having a full array of tools to use will make it much easier to manage your site.
Here are the steps for putting up your own web site:
1. Register a domain name at GoDaddy.com, PlanetDomain.com, NameCheap.com, or LowestDomainRates.com.
2. Sign up for a web hosting service at a recommended company. Do not sign up at the same place you registered the domain. Also, do not register a domain at your web hosting provider, in case you ever decide to change hosting companies.
3. Once you are signed up with a company to host your web site, then log into your account where you registered your domain name and change the nameservers to point to your hosting company (the hosting company provides the nameserver information you will need). This is fairly simple, but if you need help the first time be sure to call the company where you registered the domain name and ask how to do it. They should be happy to tell you.
All you have to do now is to wait for the nameservers to be changed to your web hosting service, and then put up your site or pay someone else to do it for you.
Discover which are the best web hosting services available. Visit http://www.internet-home-business-blog.com before you sign up with the wrong web hosting company.
Author: Carol Stack
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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