How to Choose a Web Host
A self-hosted site is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to build a stronger brand image. If you want a professional web presence, you must have your own domain and web host. For just a few dollars per month, you give your site credibility and recognition.
What should you look for in your web host?
- Close to 100% uptime
You don’t want your site to be down when potential customers want to view it. - PHP 5
You want new PHP scripts to work flawlessly. - Enough storage space
Try to determine what you plan on putting on the server. If you want to use your space for backing up important documents, make sure there is enough space, and make sure you can password-protect a directory. - Enough bandwidth
Try to find as much bandwidth as possible so you can upload enough to your site at a time. Downloading, which includes each page view, also counts as bandwidth.
So far, the best option I’ve seen for web hosts is 1&1. Right now you can sign up for just $6.99 a month, and get the whole first year free! This includes 150GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth. I recommend the 1&1 Home plan, but you may determine one of the other plans better suits your needs. They also offer vouchers to save you money on Google Adwords, Citysearch, Spreadshirt, and other external services. It’s really an unbeatable deal.
The worst paid host I’ve worked with is GoDaddy. They advertise frequently, but their services are terrible. Their support is of no help, and then they try to sell you support. They also lose websites from time to time. The interface is restrictive and it is difficult if not impossible to set up a decently functioning WordPress blog due to all of the restrictions they put on your site.
Please do not even consider one of the free hosts. They often put ads all over the site to generate revenue, and offer extremely limited services (no email, no FTP, no PHP, no domain).
Ingredients of a Bad Website
Surely while surfing the internet you come across websites that make you sick. Here we present the first installment of “Ingredients of a Bad Website.”
- Excessive ads- This nonprofit can’t get hosting without the unprofessional ads? I would even volunteer to host them for free.
- Missing images- What is supposed to be in this box? A logo?
- Boring and repetitive text- Two blocks of text without any images scare away visitors. I actually read the text and saw that each paragraph essentially said the same thing
Honorable mention: The site is translated into Spanish underneath the English part. Would anyone know to look down there? Probably not.
Give your organization a professional face on the web. Hire an expert who has experience with user interface design, and knows how to draw visitors to a site.
Have you seen any bad websites lately?
Research Twice as Fast
- If you want to find something on a website that does not have a search tool, use Google. Type site:www.thesite.com search terms and be amazed at the results.
- Viewing the source code of a page can often give you many answers. Example: If you hate e-mail forms (even though they help prevent spam), right clicking and viewing the source of the page will often help you find the e-mail address so you can contact them directly with your e-mail software of choice.
- Firefox has a great search tool that finds your term as you type it. It is much quicker than Internet Explorer’s search tool. Bonus: Firefox 3 uses much less memory, browses faster, and helps you bookmark items for easy retrieval later.
- Sit up straight to improve brain flow to your brain and be more alert (or lean back at 45 degrees for optimal spinal health)
- Wear ear plugs or headphones to block out distractions, and focus.
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Recent Comments
- Mathias Vagni- I think what is making it not work for you is the space between the first "<" and "?php". Delete the space.
- Joel- Oh, duh! My bad. There they are. Can the subtitles appear just below the title on the main page, before the jump? It looks out of place when it's below the date, appearing more like a blurb than a subtitle.
- Joel- Great tip. I just wish you attached screenshots to the article. It's difficult to imagine how these subtitles look like when coupled with Wordpress blog titles if you've been seeing just titles since the blogging platform was launched.
- Gloria Charm- Yea, these are all great opinion! I am so with you on this one... Let me see if it works on my blog.
- Traffic plugin guy- Relating to WordPress and WordPress plugins. We have a a really interesting viral traffic plugin that will for sure help your website increase the visits. It enhances the Facebook Like or Share buttons but in a way that you have never seen. Our plugin gently pushes a message to the visitors of the site
