Provider Investigation Checklist

There are LOTS of different options which will have different levels of importance depending on your goals, budget, etc. Below I offer a basic table you can use as a starting point for a checklist as you investigate different hosting providers.

Option

Host #1

Host #2

Host #3

Pricing
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Troubleshooting Hosting Problems

As a do-it-yourself webmaster relying on shared hosting you will invariably have times where your website appears to be unreachable or suffering from latency or other performance problems. Here is a quick guide for troubleshooting.

Trouble reaching a website or performance issues with a reachable website can usually be attributed to one of the following:

  • Your PC. To verify this, try accessing your site from another computer

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Monitoring Site Uptime

Practically all host providers will assure you they constantly monitor their networks and websites. While I won’t accuse them of lying exactly, I will say that my experience is that I often catch problems either (1) they were unaware of, or (2) before they were aware of them. Hopefully your webhost will offer some sort of network status site or hotline to consult before opening … [ Read more ]

Web Hosting Essentials

You should use my checklist when shopping for a web host, but below is a list of what I think are “essential” services to have in a hosting account.

  • Secure shell access (putty, telnet, etc.). Most lower-level hosting plans don’t offer this, instead offering a control panel that can do many things you would use shell access to do. If you

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What Is Web Hosting?

This is probably obvious but…in order to have a website available for the world to see you must have a computer with webserver software and a good, always-on connection to the Internet. While you could (and some do) build and host your own server I really can’t think of a good reason for anyone who would be reading this to even consider that option. The … [ Read more ]