Website Hosting- What is the Best Web Host Company For Your Site?

Where is the best web hosting? Who do you turn to for hosting your website in Melbourne? When confronted with the question “who or what is a good web host”, here are the first and most important things you should look for.

Website Uptime Guarantee

Your carefully crafted website needs to be online. Stop for a moment and run some numbers. A 99.9% uptime guarantee means there is a full 2 weeks’ worth of downtime per year. Imagine if that was in the peak traffic season, when most of your work came in! Look for and insist on better than 99.9% uptime.

Unlimited Databases with Unlimited Users

Chances are, you might move to a content management system one day. To help you understand what a content management system is, the article you’ll see by following the link should clear up most of your questions. If you move to a CMS or run any sort of database dependant component or application, it’s important that your web host doesn’t restrict the number of databases you can have.

Technical Support by Phone, 24 Hours Per Day

When something goes wrong, you want to know that you can make a call, and be connected to a person who speaks the same language as you, with sufficient technical expertise to fix your problem right away. Support tickets, callbacks on Tuesday if your problem happens on the Thursday night before Easter- are old school- it’s not done that way anymore in the real world. Make some test calls to your web host and gauge the level of help you get.

Unlimited Email Accounts, Sub-Domains and Databases

These are a given- yet some hosts limit you, or charge you for making extra above their allocated quota. You can’t let yourself be shackled by rules in this regard, you need the freedom to grow your accounts without limits as your web and business needs dictate.

Permission to Run Your Own Scripts on the Server

You need to be able to instal scripts to perform specific functions, if your web server does not have them installed already. Most will allow almost anything- but determine that the things you need are there- or can be put there. You might want specific scripts written to do certain things- but if they are unable to be installed, then they are useless to you. And while we’re on permissions- the owner of all the files on your website- should cite you as the owner. This applies to those you upload to the server as well as those you create on the server. If your web server permissions are set wrong, you will have trouble modifying files, deploying them, and in a worse case scenario, leave your website exposed to attack.

The above list is not an exhaustive one- but you need to know that these critical things are taken care of. Moving a website to or from a web host is not difficult- but it’s not the best thing in seo terms- it doesn’t imply stability in Google’s eyes. The best web hosting makes all the difference, for you, the website owner, the website developer and webmaster, as well as your visitors. Great web site hosting companies- the best ones out there will often migrate your website for you as part of the “welcome aboard” they offer new customers.