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Tech Tips for Picking a Web Hosting Company
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Here are my tips for finding a web hosting company and improving your chances of a happy hosting experience.
No web hosting company is a perfect match for your needs. No web hosting company has 100% perfect reviews on web hosting forums. It’s a matter of trade-offs. I think that understanding the needs of a site with programming behind it requires a different set of criteria than most standard web hosting sales pitches and articles address.
Though this article is skewed toward PHP, MySQL, Apache Linux (LAMP) web hosting, it also addresses general issues discussed that are relevant to web hosting in general.
When you are starting out, you are looking for “shared web hosting” (also known as virtual hosting). Yours is not the only site on the server. There might be 100 or 1000 other sites on that server. This article is written about shared web hosting.
To a web hosting company, the ideal customer has a few static HTML files and nearly no visitors. Your dynamic content places more demands on the server than static HTML does. Even robots alone chew up web hosting resources when they visit all the pages that are created dynamically that don’t “exist” like static HTML pages do.
Web Hosting Software Needs to Support Your Applications
Think about what you will do with your site. Check which versions of PHP, MySQL and Apache you require (what I will refer to as “system software.”)
If the web hosting server does not meet your needs, move on. Web hosting companies do not upgrade system software often. This is partly because it can wreck havoc with existing customers by breaking their apps which causes much trouble for their expensive and limited support staff. No matter what the sales folks say. Note that many web hosting companies have more than one server and not all servers have the exact same software versions.
Web Hosting Server Settings
Server settings refer to settings that apply to all sites on the web hosting company’s server. Server settings are preset by the web hosting company. This includes which Apache modules are loaded and which PHP extensions or options are compiled into PHP.
Look again at what you will run on your site. Be aware that many apps and tutorials assume you have total access to the web hosting server and can configure it however you want. If you need a different setting, option, extension or module, you are doomed. Don’t count on the web hosting company changing any settings you request. Even if the customer support rep says they would change a setting for you, the tech staff might have real reasons why they will not change it. Look at this from the web hosting company’s perspective: there are a great many customers getting web hosting on a single server and the server needs to stay stable and running.
My personal experience was that I wanted to do something that required CURL for PHP, but my web hosting company at the time did not compile it into PHP. My fatal issue was right there in the app’s readme:
To use PHP’s CURL support you must also compile PHP --with-curl[=DIR] where DIR ...
Here are more real examples to illustrate the importance of getting web hosting that has the settings you require at the time you sign up.
- Web hosting requires GD Graphics Library be compiled into PHP. You require the GD graphics library which enables you to dynamically create and edit images server-side. PHP needs to be compiled with the GD library of image functions. Maybe it is already compiled in the version running on the web hosting server, but maybe it is not.
- App needs web hosting that allows editing of .htaccess file. The readme says
log into your server and edit your .htaccess file as follows... Sounds innocent enough. .htaccess files allow the user to make configuration changes to the server on a per-directory basis when the user does not have root access on the server system. However, some web hosting companies have the Apache directive set to ignore .htaccess files (AllowOverride is set to None). Web hosting companies have valid reasons for doing so. Performance and security suffer when it is allowed. (Details in the official Apache docs.)
- Libraries, toolkits and special settings must be compiled into PHP by web hosting company. The readme states:
Compile PHP with special options to get mssql and fdf support in php under apache. First, you’ll need to download the FDF toolkit from Adobe and the freetds libraries for mssql support. To compile, use these settings...
- Application requires permissions not granted by shared web hosting: An interesting experience with server settings from someone who signed up for his first web hosting. Excerpt from his web hosting story:
Then here came the trouble. The web service I have now only includes FTP, PHP/perl, Blog, and other common tools. They are preset and I have no right to change any settings. I can get ssh/shell access if I am willing to fax them a photo ID. But I would rather forsake that right.
However, in both Slashdot’s and Squirrel’s scenarios, they assume that you have complete access to the web server with administrator authority. That is, you are the person who set up the server. At least, I guess if I bought a dedicated server, I might have had these privileges. Otherwise, I am doomed.
Downside of Cheap Web Hosting
Generally, you get what you pay for with web hosting. Decide how important your site is. Web hosting for a personal or hobby site can afford more downtime and problems than web hosting for a site you are trying to make money with. Beware. Most free web hosting companies put advertising on your site. You have no control over what ads or pop-ups appear. That said, servers are cheaper than they have ever been and cheap web hosting can work out.
Number of Sites Hosted Per Server
Many cheap web hosting companies load too many customers on a single server. Under heavy loads, server response times are slow. Ask how many sites are hosted per server. Especially beware the package deals where you get web hosting for many, or unlimited, sites for one price. The worst web hosting experience I ever had was this type. The server went down alot. When it was not down, it was painfully slow.
Traffic (Bandwidth)
You likely will have less traffic than you think. In general, go with web hosting that offers a money-saving lower traffic plan that allows you to upgrade if, and when, you need it. How much bandwidth to sign up for depends on such factors as the nature of your site (mostly text, or lots of photos, videos, podcasts?) Blazonry can get alot of visitors, but because the site is mostly text, the bandwidth needs are relatively low. A site doing podcasting or photo sharing has bigger bandwidth needs.
Web Hosting Reviews
Do a Google search of the web hosting companies you are considering. Also, visit forums like WebHostingTalk and WebmasterWorld. You’ll likely find lots of postings.
Support
I like web hosting companies that provide:
- online FAQs, help, forums. Many problems can be fixed easily (and you are a tech person who wants
to learn the details of web hosting, right?).
- online support 24/7 for serious problems
- trouble ticket system where you can prioritize the severity of your problem. That way, big problems can be addressed
first. Little problems can wait until the big problems are taken care of.
One common recommendation I disagree with is phone support. I prefer online support because I can paste detailed text about the problem and sometimes offer a solution. If you really want phone support, be willing to pay for it. It’s more expensive to the web hosting company.
The Standard Stuff (Applies To Any Web Hosting)
- Amount of disk space — disk space is so cheap now that most disk space provided with web hosting packages is more than adequate. Check it against
the type of files you will upload. Remember to allow enough disk space for email accounts especially if you use web-based email (as opposed to downloading your email to your desktop).
- Access — FTP only, or do you need shell (SSH) access?
- Reliability — uptime guarantees are mostly worthless because web hosting companies are reluctant to refund money. They will find all kinds of reasons why the situation is not covered by their guarantee. Use uptime numbers as a relative measure to compare web hosting plans. Uptime of 99% is lousy. 99.5% is the minimum I would accept for hosting a general site. If web hosting cannot even meet that relatively low number, look elsewhere.
- Email — number of accounts, amount of storage space, etc. standard stuff. If you have a favorite web-based email, check if it is provided as part of the web hosting package.
- Control Panel (or similar) — simplifies management of your site. Includes ability to add, delete, and manage email addresses, change passwords, check your traffic stats, and more. Handy and helpful even for non-beginners of web hosting.
- Server operating system — I am biased in favor of Linux hosting. It is awesome and generally cheaper. Quality Linux web hosting is wide-spread.
- Payment plan — Monthly, quarterly or annual. Generally you want to start out with a short-term plan in case you are unhappy with your web hosting. However, one time I took a chance with an annual plan and the web hosting company was great to work with. (ReadyHosting for cheap ASP hosting back when I did ASP/Windows development).
Web Hosting Summary
With web hosting, jump in. Just do it. It’s not that hard to change web hosting companies if you are unhappy. Better to
have web hosting for your site than to keep your development efforts limited to “localhost.” Hope my years of
experience with web hosting, ranging from good to bad hosting, help you.
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