Netty said:
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!