Choosing Your First Hosting Provider

By David J. Smith

Ok, you have finished your great new web site. You've spent hours upon hours working on the design until you have made it perfect, you have chosen an excellent domain name to use for the site, and a great deal of content. Of course, your next question is "What step do I take next?". Choosing the best web hosting provider for your needs can be the difference between a successful web site, or a failure.

An excellent site running on a poor host is a recipe for disaster, if your provider cannot keep your site online 24 hours, 7 days a week you could be missing out on visitors and if your site is for your business, this could mean lost sales as well. It is very important to consider several elements when choosing your first web host, too many people are dissatisfied with their current web hosting provider. First and foremost, the best web hosting provider is the one that suits your needs.

Disk Space

The first thing to take into consideration is disk space. The amount of disk space your will require depends on the size of the web site, and of course how much money you can afford to spend. Ideally you should always go with a plan that has room to grow, if your site currently is around 200mb you must ask yourself, how large will the site be in 12 months, or even 2 years. If you plan to serve media files from your site such as videos, flash animations, or any other type of content that tends to be large in size, you will need to allow for this as well.

Bandwidth

The second thing to consider is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data you will be serving to your visitors, if you have plans of having a high traffic site in the future, you should consider a plan that allows for a high amount of bandwidth. As with disk space, it is also wise to consider more bandwidth than what your site will require initially, not less.

Serving Speed

The speed that pages are served from the host is often overlooked when it comes to choosing a hosting provider, you should always track down other sites hosted at the web host you are considering. If pages are not served in a timely fashion, your visitors may not wait around to view your content.

Final Words

Each of the above elements need to be taken into consideration when you are choosing a web hosting provider, for all the hosts out there this can take considerable time and effort, take the time to research each hosting provider as well as you can and you will be rewarded for your efforts, rushing into a hosting choice is more often than not a bad decision.

David J. Smith writes about Dreamhost and other top web hosting providers at http://www.Webhost-Advisor.com.

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