Blog Tips Etcetera

Things to Consider When Choosing Your Blog Host

Feb 21, 2008 Hosting and Domain

Looking for a good host for your blog can be a exhausting job. You need to compare every hosts you encounter.

I have experienced switching hosts. I first started with free hosts but lost everything in the end. My host either terminated my account (due to resource abuse, and yes without a warning) or they were terminated from their hosting accounts. See, some free hosts only have reseller accounts, which means they don’t have their own server.

Due to these incidences, I became meticulous in choosing my blog host. Losing your blog is one hell of a nightmare, especially if you already have an established blog i.e. you have already built your readership and obtained page rank.

Currently, I am hosted by WebHostingBuzz, and so far I am contented with their hosting. When I was host-hopping, I considered these things:

1. Price. This is one of the major considerations of a blogger looking for a host provider. Web hosting is like every product - an affordable one is most attractive. B2Evolution.net listed the top recommended budget hosts for the month of February.

2. Technical Support. A good technical support is one of the main reasons why a hosted member sticks to its current host. I usually get irritated when I didn’t get a reply to my support ticket within 24 hours, even if it’s set to “urgent”.

3. Features.

• Storage capacity. Determine how much storage do you need. A warning though: there’s no such thing as unlimited storage or bandwidth. As the saying goes, when it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
• Bandwidth. You should always consider getting a higher bandwidth if you anticipate your blog to grow in the future. It will be needing it if you have increased your traffic.
• Control Panel/Fantastico/Auto-installation script. You will need them to easily set up your blog. Great news is, most web host have these features.
• Other features - MySQL, subdomain, add-on and parked domains limit, database limit, etc.

4. Shared hosting or a dedicated server. As a starter, it’s advised to try shared hosting to save up budget. However, if you have customized your site well and gained much traffic, you may upgrade to a dedicated server.

5.  Uptime.  It’s a very important criteria for choosing a blog host.  Uptime refers to how often a site is available or responsive to web requests. A visitor could be arriving at your site’s home page at any time of the day, so your site needs to be up every time.

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Tags: Site Uptime, Tips on Choosing a Blog Host, Web Hosting