What Type of Hosting Should I Get?
Web hosting can be quite a wonderful thing once you get it all figured out, especially with all of the neat things you can do. But how do you get to the point where you know what you want and you know what you need? This is where a little bit of research comes into play, but I am going to try to help you out with that a little bit before sending you out into the cyber world. Typically I think it is better to start out broad and narrow your way down. So let’s start with what type of server platform you would like to run, Windows or Linux.
Linux is notorious for running the PHP scripting language, while Windows more commonly is left to run languages such as those built on the ASP.Net framework. Either server platform can more than handle serving HTML, CSS, and Javascript files so it really comes down to what type of open source software you intend to use, or if you are creating a website from scratch, which language you are comfortable with. Alternatively if you are going to hire a developer to create your website then you need to make sure whatever server platform you pick, they are more than qualified to handle. Popular software such as the WordPress blogging platform uses PHP, which in most hosting environments requires a Linux server. It has been known to work on Windows servers with PHP enabled, however this is somewhat painful to figure out until done so by error and PHP tends to run much better in a native Linux environment. On the other hand the ASP.Net framework does have a few tricks up its sleeve including the DotNetNuke content management system and several connectors for hooking in to various different database systems.
Ok so let’s stop and do a quick self-check right now and see where we stand. If you are still confused and are going to pass off the development to someone else, it would be a good idea to interview a few different developers. Doing so allows for you to see which person will work best for your project and they can surely help gear you in the right direction for which server platform you will want to go with. In my personal experience though, finding PHP developers is bit more easily done and typically less expensive than finding .Net developers simply because there seem to be a lot more people skilled in PHP thus the competitive pricing is a bit more evolved. When it comes down to it, PHP versus ASP.Net or [insert language name here], for websites most dynamic languages are all relatively capable of the same things so it just depends on personal preference, the native language of a desired application, or simply what you are most comfortable.
Now that we have a server platform picked out, here comes the fun part… deciding whether we need shared hosting, a virtual private server, or a dedicated server. Shared hosting is the most commonly used package, not to mention the cheapest. The downside however is that you are potentially sharing the same server with 1,000 other hosting accounts, if not more. You also have considerably less control over certain server level features such as the maximum upload size, the maximum amount of memory that can be dedicated to a process, and the amount of disk space available tends to be much less than that of the other options. However, unless you are looking to store a large amount of files, have extensive amounts of traffic, or run large batch processes that require a significant amount of memory, you shouldn’t need much more than a shared hosting package. Most providers will also offer you the ability to have a dedicated IP address for your domain which can protect your website from being blacklisted should another website on your shared IP address have malicious intentions and prove to be unsafe for the internet world. Like I said though, chances are the shared hosting will be all you need, especially if you are new to web hosting. I will however continue my explanation of the three options.
Virtual private servers are somewhat a hybrid between shared hosting and a dedicated server and as such their price typically falls somewhere in the middle. Where shared hosting can range from $5 to $20 a month, virtual dedicated servers can be anywhere from $25 to $100 a month. The features and added benefit of a virtual dedicated server can more than make up for the difference though if you get to that point. Virtual dedicated servers essentially run a new instance of a server operating system for each account on the server. What this means is that each account essentially appears to be on its own server and isolated from any other accounts, but in actuality there could be several other accounts on that server with you. Having your own virtual instance of a server lets you have much more control over the limits placed on upload sizes, typically guarantees a much higher and more consistent amount of RAM available to your processes, and can give you the ability to install complimentary software systems that have to be run on a computer itself and cannot exist within the web server portion. Just to help give you an idea of how this can help you out, let’s say you have a website that generates thumbnails of other people’s websites and stores them for historical purposes. Your website will then accept web addresses from users that wish to be a part of your service while also letting them view historical thumbnails of their website. On the server, you could have some software installed that is set to run every 15 minutes which will check the web page database for new entries and then fetch the website, create the thumbnail, and store it in a folder for the website to then retrieve and display. Having this application there to work in complement with your website frees up some of the strain placed on the server, makes the process more local alleviating the need for excessive communication between the web process and the server processing needed to create the thumbnail and can help cut down on bandwidth usage as well. With that being said, how about we move on to the final option.
Dedicated servers offer the best of the best. With the best however often comes the highest price tag. Dedicated servers can range anywhere from $80 to $400 or more depending on the server setup you opt for. Different hosting providers have different packages, but some let you request custom setups in case you are running a highly specific niche set of applications for your website like gaming server applications. Much like the virtual private server you practically get full control over the server, and since you are the only one using it the processing power is all yours, the RAM is always available for your processes and not being reserved elsewhere, and you get exactly the disk space covered by the server. I don’t think I need to throw out another hypothetical scenario here for what you could do with this server, but just think of it like having your very own nifty high powered server but it just so happens to live in a high tech server house with internet connections us home users could only dream of having everyday access to.
At any rate, let’s continue on and get down to the most overwhelming part of it all. We know what server platform we want, and we know what type of hosting plan we want, but now we have to find the company that is going to provide that for us. There are a lot of companies out there, and I really do mean a lot. So how do you pick the best one? Research, research, research. You want to make sure the company you choose not only has the right price for your project, but that they also have performance guarantees you need to make sure once you are hosted with them, your website will remain online for as long as humanly possible! Downtime can really kill your websites mojo, especially once you get a nice little user base going. I am all about trusting the biggest and the best in the industry, but the small guys can be pretty darn good at what they do as well. The first thing you want to look at is their website. A good, clean website can say a lot about the company. It should clearly describe everything their package offers, what types of promises and guarantees they have, and it never hurts to have support phone numbers and maybe a live chat box available in case you ever run in to trouble. The more the company cares about the customers, the better the service will be typically. I have worked with quite a few hosts in the past so I will throw out a few names to get your started:
Always a favorite because of their widely provocative commercials, catchy jingles, and very outgoing appearance. They also offer just about every service you could ever think of, but they tend to throw so many other features and services at you that you end up with packages you don’t ever need because they already came with something else you purchased. So just be careful not to get click happy on checkout.
My personal favorite and I am a touch biased having recently moved all my accounts over from GoDaddy (no problems with them, just a better fit over here). Down to the features and such though. BlueHost is strictly Linux hosting, currently offers unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth along with a wash list of other features. Don’t get supremely excited though at the sight of “unlimited” as there are certain provisions in the customer agreement that strongly discourage abuse of either at the risk of account suspension or removal. Overall, still a pretty neat company.
A little less known as they seem to rely a fair amount on their affiliate users to spread the word about their services. Overall though, they are a pretty solid company with a few more hosting plans and options than either of the aforementioned. They also offer both Linux and Windows hosting plans much like GoDaddy does giving you a fair amount of flexibility with their offerings.
To keep the list going there are a few others I know of but have little to no real experience with other than word of mouth from friends and other enthusiasts:
Of couse, having a web hosting plan will not do you much good if you do not yet have a domain, so if you need any help in that area, feel free to check out my previous post, Looking to buy your first domain?
If you have any questions, or just don’t really know where to start, you are always more than welcome to contact me. I always love to hear from my readers and am here to help.