We often see adverts offering the best hosting service, but what does that really mean? It's very easy to be blinded by the technology and complex terminology, like unlimited this that and the other, but what do we really need? Naturally, this does depend on what we want from our website, and what our site will be used for. For example, if we intend to host a video site at one extreme, then we'll have to get large amounts of storage and a healthy bandwidth capacity to cope with the usage.
At the other extreme, if we just have a simple site, or a blog, then we don't need a lot in the way of storage and bandwidth. In this instance we could use a very cheap service costing just a few dollars a month. Let's discuss the basic requirements for someone who wants to create many sites. Firstly, the service needs to be very simple to use, with a fool-proof interface, like the one with C-Panel.
Having used both Plesk and C-Panel, it's obvious to me that there is no comparison between the two. Present day C-Panel user interfaces use 1-click installation of familiar platforms, such as Wordpress, which means you can create your site really fast. Your hosting service should be configured for html and php, of course, and should give you a guaranteed up-time.
Most host services advertise over 99%, which is pretty good. This brings us on to the topic of customer support, which is really important. One day I happened to find one of my websites was offline for about thirty minutes, so I was not too pleased. When I called customer service, the host rep gave me very little information about the problem. I transferred immediately to a company with great communication - and it was cheaper as well! I did use Godaddy for a while, as they run deals on domain names from time to time, but their ftp-like access panel and overall hosting usability is over complex and cumbersome. Nevertheless, great for purchasing domain names - just buy the name, change the server names and a couple of hours later you'll be up and running from your preferred host provider. I frequently by.info domains and use these for creating niche sites. At a couple of dollars a shot, it makes perfect sense. For my money, where Google is concerned, the use of.com, .info, .net, or.org makes precisely no difference at all to the search position for your keywords. My advice is, buy from Godaddy but host somewhere else.
If you think you'll be making many sites, then you need a host provider that offers unlimited add-on domains. After creating your primary site, you simply create separate folders for new domains, set the servers for your newly purchased domain names, and you have the facility for running hundreds of static websites or blogs on one server for a few dollars a month.
If you create many websites, maybe it's a good idea to separate them a little. I have 70 sites with one provider, 60 more with a second, and some others elsewhere - it pays to be careful, even with the best hosting service.
Graham Bailey
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