Continuing the Start A Blog series, in this post I will discuss about how to choose a reliable web host for your blog, with a special approach about choosing the right web hosting for a WordPress blog. So, previously we saw how to choose a blogging niche, how to choose a proper domain name for a blog and why you need to buy a domain name. And now? Of course it is time to grab a hosting account to house your new baby (blog).

Website Hosting

Choosing a proper web hosting company is one of the most important steps to consider since the performance of your blog will largely depends on the service offered by the hosting company. These include the average load time of your pages and your blog’s uptime which directly affect the ranking of your blog on search engines. I guess you have heard that Google and other search engines too are using a site’s load time as a very important factor to determine the ranking of the site. Beside, having a slow blog or even one which is constantly down, will scare off your readers.

So to avoid these type of mishaps, we shall now see what are the main factors which you need to consider while choosing and purchasing a web hosting account.

Fact 1: What is unlimited diskspace and unlimited bandwidth

Well the question should actually be “is unlimited disk and bandwidth important at all?” – IMHO, no! If you are going to host a blog or even several small to medium size blogs, even 10GB of diskspace is far too much you will be using far less than 50GB of bandwidth per month. Bandwidth and diskspace are important to consider if your blog or website is going to host large media files such as lots of HD pics, videos and music and so on but then if you are creating a site which is going to host a lot of media files, it is wiser to use a CDN to host these files rather than depending on the hosting server.

It’s quite common to see people purchasing web hosting accounts based on the amount of Space and Bandwidth offered only. For sure these are real marketing strike points.

So knowing that these 2 factors are not so important, the next question should be if a hosting company can REALLY offer unlimited space and bandwidth? The answer is no because no web hosting service can offer its customer an unlimited service since computer resources are limited. Do not forget that a server is actually a computer configured to act as a..hmm.. house for websites. Nothing more nothing less. You can check these two articles below for more details about these unlimited space and bandwidth “shouts”.

• What is unlimited disk space in web hosting?
• What is unlimited bandwidth in web hosting?

Fact 2: CPU and RAM of a server. Are they important?

Beside disk space and bandwidth, the computer resources of your web host is of a major importance. In fact the CPU power and RAM of a hosting server are among the most important factors to consider.

On shared servers, you cannot really know what are the exacts server’s specs (though you can always have an overwiew from CPanel) but if you are using a VPS or Dedicated Server, then you should be able to have access to these information. You must have heard that a computer actually needs a RAM upgrade before really needing a CPU power upgrade. The same concept applies for a server.

If you are going for a shared hosting account, then you do not have to worry about RAM and CPU since most web hosting companies will ensure that their servers are up by providing and upgrading the servers with the right amount of CPU power and RAM.  But these are the most important resources to consider because if your host provides lots of bandwidth and disk space but the servers themselves are under-powered, the service is completely useless!

On the other side if you are using a VPS or Dedicated Server, then based on my personal experience I found the following specs useful.

• Daily visitors: 10000
• Average max users online at same time: 100
• Recommended RAM: At least 3GB
• Recommended CPU: Atleast over 3GHz

Note that here I am talking about a blog using WordPress as CMS and mysql as database and a blog having a fair amount of widgets here and there (thus more db queries per call). For those having static sites or even WP blogs with minimal design and really low db queries, the recommended specs might be less than these.

Fact 3: Reliability and Reviews of a web host

Now this is the most important factor of all to consider when choosing a web host for your blog.  Reliability of a web host consists mostly of two parts: The Uptime and Load Time.

Most web hosting companies make their uptime data publicly available. Uptime is in brief the amount of hours the server is up and running per month. Usually a 99.9% uptime is the best. Logically we cannot always expect a 100% uptime because at some point in time a server will face some trouble or even downtime during upgrades. If you cannot find the uptime data of a hosting provider, you can always contact clients who are already hosting their sites with the host and ask about their experience with the service as well as their site’s uptime.

Most bloggers will readily provide this data. For example if you ask me about Hostgator, then I’ll recommend it readily since I have had no major downtime since I am with them. Only once my sites were down for about 5 minutes and this was due to some server maintenance.

The 2nd factor is to check reviews  about the hosting company. A search on Google will do the job but you will notice that most results are from web hosting reviews sites and I always take the reviews on those sites with a pinch of salt. Why? Because you can’t really know which reviews are paid-to-praise or paid-to-sabotate ones. The best way to have a real decent review of a webhost is to find site owners who are already using the service and ask.

Here are two tools you might also find useful in this quest:

• Check other sites hosted on the same server as another website
• Check who is hosting a specific website

Fact 4: Shared Hosting, VPS or Dedicated Server?

The 3 main types of web hosting are:

• Shared Hosting
• VPS Hosting
• Dedicated Hosting

Here I’ll explain briefly which is what and when to go for each but most of us will require as a starting point, a shared hosting account.

Shared Hosting

Shared Hosting is the most common hosting type and also the cheapest way out. In theory, under shared hosting plans, you are actually paying the hosting company to host your websites on a server alongside many other websites and all sharing the server’s resources (RAM, CPU, Disk etc).

As such the cost of operating the server is handled by all the clients having an account on the server and thus the cheaper per-client pricing. Shared hosting prices can vary between $2/month to upto $15/month. Usually a fair hosting provider will host about 200 to 250 websites on a shared server and some hosts who are offering a cheaper service can even be compressing about over 500 websites on a shared server. Obviously the less websites per server means more reliability but the overall server resources also play a role in determining this reliability.

VPS Hosting

VPS also called Virtual Private Server is the midway solution between a shared hosting solution and a dedicated server. When your site’s demand increases, it is probably time to move to a more dedicated solution but what if your budget does not allow it or if you are unsure about the real resources upgrades needed? In this case a move to a VPS is suitable.

A VPS is a hosting plan where a server’s resources are shared by a limited amount of clients. You have shell access to the server and other benefits of having a dedicated server. The resources allocated to you is also predefined and other clients on the server cannot take your site down if ever they crash their own virtual box. VPS pricing usually starts at about $19/month but to have a reliable VPS package you can expect to pay upto $100/month and the most important factors to consider are of-course how much dedicated RAM, and CPU you will be having.

Dedicated Server Hosting

A dedicated server is all about having a whole server for yourself that is, you are actually allocated the whole server resources. It is of course more secure since you will be the only one who will be using the server and also be able to manage how to use the overall server resources. However you also need to consider the amount of resources you will be having for the price you are paying for. You can get a starting level Dedicated server at about $150/month but at this price you might be having a dedi with a specs of about 2GB RAM and CPU of about 3Ghz. If having only your projects on the server is not a requisite, then you can be having a more powerful VPS (in terms of resources) compared to the dedicated at the same price.

Fact 5: Customer Support of a web host

After sale service is very important and this applies in web hosting too. Sooner or later you will encounter some problem or have your site down for some reasons and having a hosting company who emphasizes much on customer care service is of major importance.

It’s quite easy to verify if a hosting company has a good customer care service. On most web hosting company’s website you will either find some sort of live chat support or email support. Simply try contacting by live chat and ask about all the minor details of the service. Do not hesitate to be irritating! In this way you will know how the company handles even the most amateurish customer.

Going for a web hosting service which offers live chat support is the best since you will not have to wait for hours to have a solution to your future problems. However be careful! Many hosting companies uses bots chat agents (softwares) to handle their so-called live chat support. You can easily differentiate from a real person chatting with you and a bot right?

If the company does not have live chat support option, then try sending a really boring email asking lots of details about the host. Act like an amateur and see how much time they take to reply back and with how much details.

Usually if you are waiting for more than 1 hour to get an email support reply, well, time to look out for another service with a more reliable support. I have personally used Rackspacecloud, Hostgator and a less known hosting service “Doreo” and have been really pleased with their fast support response. Rackspace and Hostgator provide live chat support powered by real hosting specialists who are ready to answer all your questions.

Fact 6 : File Management System (CPANEL)

As a blogger, you need an easy way to manage your blogs and other hosting details such as email addresses, databases and domains. The best and most popular GUI for web hosting management is CPanel. Cpanel is ofcourse a paid software but most web hosts offer CPanel access with their service.

The advantage of CPanel is that is it user friendly to use and is one of the most secure User Friendly web hosting management panel. Also it is one of the most popular script being used by most hosting companies and as such if ever you have to move from one host to another, you can easily do a Cpanel backup to export all your websites.

So be sure that you choose a host which is offering free CPanel access with its service. If you are going for a dedicated server or VPS though, you might be paying for the monthly license separately (usually and additional of $10 to $15 per month).

Fact 7: Payment methods

Most web hosting companies accept payment via Paypal or Credit Card. These two are the most common ways to pay. I have a slight preference for Paypal payment though since I do not like to give my credit card details to some unknown companies. But if you are going with some major and well known companies, you can do so without any fear.

Fact 8: Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting?

Linux hosting is best since it is cheaper, most popular, and more powerful. In fact most web hosts offer Linux Hosting. Newbies might think that using a Linux hosting is difficult but worry not since even if you have never used Linux on your own PC, you can host your site on a Linux powered server. The OS of the hosting server has no link to the OS you use on your PC since you only communicate with the hosting server via your browser or FTP.

So unless you have a special need for a Windows based hosting account (using IIS), go for a Linux hosting account.

Tagged as: choose a web host, factors to consider while buying a hosting account, web hosting for wordpress tips, web hosting tips

This article was contributed by Kurt Tewin

Kurt is a webmaster, blogger, and PHP developer who lives on the Paradise island of Mauritius and who has a crazy obsession for everything Wordpress and Blogging. He founded Icy Tips to share some of his tips with the community. He is also the owner of IC a famous multi-niche daily updated community blog and the C.E.O of Icy Evolution Ltd.

Kurt has written 24 awesome articles for us at Icy Tips