New to hosting

[Netty]

I just registered my 1st domain and really do not know much about hosting.
Could anyone give me some essential pointers please?
Thank you with all my heart! all my four hearts!!!!

 

[Swizi]

I just registered my 1st domain and really do not know much about hosting.
Could anyone give me some essential pointers please?
Thank you with all my heart! all my four hearts!!!!

Well for choosing a host, research is the most important thing to do before choosing.
For example - search these forums - there's a specific area of the forum for warnings and bad reviews - Warnings and Alerts

And there's also Google (www.google.com) and there's a very popular forum dedicated to web hosting - Web Hosting Talk (www.webhostingtalk.com).

Basically when choosing a host, research research research.
- Don't go for big plans! You wont need all that space and bandwidth, so why buy that much?
- Get a list of hosts, research each one, then narrow your choices down to about 3, or less, and then do further research on them.
- Send your final choice of hosts a sales email asking genuine questions, go for the quickest response (but make sure the questions are answered correctly).
- Finally, from the above, choose that host, if you are still unsure, post here on the forums or at Web Hosting Talk and the community will happily help you. But you can easily find possible good and bad reviews by searching google and forums.
- Last but not least, do NOT choose unlimited or unmetered plans (most of the hosts offering this are fly-by-night hosts)
- And if you are worried, pay monthly, that way if something does go wrong, you've only lost very little, rather than a lot by paying yearly.

Backups are essential too, so do some of those, preferably once a week. Or if you want to, once a day. Do them yourself.

A popular host with many good reviews is www.hostgator.com (they also have bad reviews) and there's also www.dreamhost.com. Both are popular hosts, and also are big hosts. And oversellers (which is not a bad thing) as they can handle it.

I hope I helped, and good luck in choosing a host, and making your first website!

 

[Waiter]

A popular host with many good reviews is www.hostgator.com (they also have bad reviews) and there's also www.dreamhost.com. Both are popular hosts, and also are big hosts. And oversellers (which is not a bad thing) as they can handle it.

Yeap. And sometimes guys read one review (the bad one) decide that company is bad (fresh sample http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=646068)

 

[AHA7]

Since you know nothing about hosting then I'd suggest that you don't pay anything for hosting at this point.

Just google "free web hosting" and you'll get tons of companies that offer free hosting services (ad-supported), change your domains DNS to those of your host and start testing for yourself (upload files, run PHP scripts, ...)

This is the best way to learn :imho:
And if you run into any troubles then there are many webmaster forums that can help you solve them.

 

[-NC-]

Good advice Swizi,

Though I would say that hosts can legitimately offer unlimited domain hosting, as AFAIK, Apache vhosts do not by themselves use any significant resources ( maybe couple hundred bytes of diskspace )
I would agreee that any host advertising unlimited diskspace or bandwidth has essentially put up a big sign saying "Hey, we're lying to you!"

I would also add:
Avoid hosts which use do not use a common control panel like cPanel, as this makes it harder to move your site to another host. ( AFAIK, you have to manually recreate your settings )

:imho:

 

[iHubNet-Matt]

Natty,

For what purpose you registered the domain? Personal or business?

 

[Swizi]

Natty,

For what purpose you registered the domain? Personal or business?

Does it matter?
It's not any of your business anyway.

You're really posting questioning information lately.
I'm not surprised many haven't answered you.

Remember what you post on the forums can effect what views people have on your business.

 

[moonlight77]

You may buy cheap web hosting from NameCheap.com.
5GB space
250GB transfer
50 email accounts
15 MySQL databases
For just $2.91 per month.

 

[edyst3]

If you are new to hosting it would be better if you choose shared hosting plan.
Because Shared hosting is easy to maintain. It allows you to host multiple domain. And the price is cheaper than other plan.
You can install popular site script automatically (such as wordpress, joomla, etc).

 

[iHubNet-Matt]

Does it matter?
It's not any of your business anyway.

You're really posting questioning information lately.
I'm not surprised many haven't answered you.

Remember what you post on the forums can effect what views people have on your business.

I think it will make a difference. if is just a personal domain, I would look at a cheap hosting.
But if it is a business site, reliability is more important. In that case, I won't go with a massive overseller. I would try to stick with one which has a good reputation,uptime and obviously good at customer support with a decent pay structure.

 

[Ultimatum]

I think that you have to - first learn about web hosting little bit more. The best place is WHT. Agree with ерые statement.
Than you will know which one do you need exactly. And then start serching.
For web hosting companies I'd recomend you have a look at:
www.hostgator.com or www.serverpoint.com.
I like them personaly and this is doesn't mean that you have to like them to
Good luck with your learning and searching.

 

[Swizi]

I think it will make a difference. if is just a personal domain, I would look at a cheap hosting.
But if it is a business site, reliability is more important. In that case, I won't go with a massive overseller. I would try to stick with one which has a good reputation,uptime and obviously good at customer support with a decent pay structure.

Overselling is not a valid reason to stay away from hosts. Look at all the good reviews about DreamHost and Hostgator.

 

[animeorb]

Overselling is not a valid reason to stay away from hosts. Look at all the good reviews about DreamHost and Hostgator.

But he was talking about using hosts for business. If you a running a website that is important for your company, reliability is of the utmost importance.

 

[Swizi]

But he was talking about using hosts for business. If you a running a website that is important for your company, reliability is of the utmost importance.

Many overselling hosts are reliable, which was the point of my post...
Re-read it.

 

[antic]

I believe shared web hosting from Webhostingbuzz.com will be good for you. The company is realiable and getting it you get a domain name for free for life.
GoDaddy.com is also not bad in providing web hosting.

 

[slytherin]

You need to take various factors into account before choosing your host.

1.) Your Budget- the most important one, along with reliability.

2.) Host reliability. You wouldn't want your site to be down when you want it to be up right ?

3.) The type of site that you have/ plan to have, and whether the host allows it. For instance, some hosts do not allow proxies, adult and warez.

Certain scripts require you to have a particular version of PHP. You might also want Fantastico, which every host may not provide. Some do not offer support for mod_rewrite.

4.) Customer service. Do your support tickets get answered quickly ?

 

[uswebdev]

Hello Netty.

I would suggest looking for a linux server with a cPanel account. cPanel will make your life easier when it comes to server moves, managing databases, installing scripts and more. Many hosts will move you for free if your are moving from cPanel to cPanel.

For instance, to install Joomla with cPanel its fast and easy: Upload the tar zipped file (45 seconds) and uncompress it (5 seconds) with the cPanel Filemanager. With most hosts, the file managers they provide don't allow this - you'd be FTP'ing up the files (20mins+) and possibly running into permission issues.

If you are going to have more domains, I would suggest starting with a WHM/cPanel account. WHM will let you create a cPanel account for each of your domains.

Once you find a few hosting companies, try out their support - see if they respond to emails, what's the phone hold times and such.

You may want to figure out what scripts you will run and then find out if your hosting support folks knows what they are and/or supports them.

Good Luck!

 

[Netty]

Thank you!

You guys are great! I love your suggestions!
But it seems to me, I need to know some other things before I even get into the hosting lol .
Oh gosh! I'm quite a beginner.

 

[Swizi]

You guys are great! I love your suggestions!
But it seems to me, I need to know some other things before I even get into the hosting lol .
Oh gosh! I'm quite a beginner.

We we all newbies/beginners at one stage

 

[Maggy]

There is a great number of guidlines for beginners in web hosting you may just type in google how to choose provider, what is web hosting etc and etc and will find tonnes of articles, sometimes really very helpful just a piece of advise - don`t go with the totally oversold web host that offers you terrabytes for a few bucks

 

[ZannuZZi]

There is a great number of guidlines for beginners in web hosting you may just type in google how to choose provider, what is web hosting etc and etc and will find tonnes of articles, sometimes really very helpful just a piece of advise - don`t go with the totally oversold web host that offers you terrabytes for a few bucks

That's right, TBs or a few buch - is incredible thing that's why you have to use web hosting a little bit expensive but guaranteeing you good uptime and 24/7 support. 1&1.com and Ahosting.biz are supposed to be such companies.

 

[EliteDesigns]

If you are still interested in trying to find a good host, read my review of HostICan
at http://elitebydesign.com/hosting-review-hostican/

I hope it helps you out.

 

[Hafsoh]

If you are still interested in trying to find a good host, read my review of HostICan
at http://elitebydesign.com/hosting-review-hostican/

I hope it helps you out.

This useful for me. Thanks

 

[loran76]

I think the OP will find what she needs among the recommended web hosting companies that were mentioned here.

 

[rondo]

You can try Hostagtor for just one penny here http://www.hostingdiary.com/2007/09/web-hosting-cou.html
This will give you an opportunity to get familiar with cpanel without risking $$.

Andrew