by Matt Hedges
You are reading this article because you are looking for a good web hosting service. And of course you would like to get the best deal that you can afford. Choosing a web hosting service is a decision that is going to have long term effects, because you may use it to support your business for many months or even years.
Today’s modern PHP web host site is quite cheap and yet can still offer benefits to satisfy a customer.
Some important points will follow later but knowing a small amount about PHP would be good. There is no doubt PHP is a popular language, used for programming and capable of being placed into HTML. Some of the reasons for its popularity can be seen here:
a. It is available for free
b. It is simple to work and operate.
c. It should be viewed as a fully object orientated language.
d. It is platform independent.
e. Its speed on the Linux server makes it very effective in building complex, and large web applications.
f. It is a great tool for programmers of an advanced nature and is suitable to be used on web pages
g. PHP also integrates very nicely with MYSQL.
Before receiving the PHP service to host a web site, first you must take many issues onboard. Firstly, and especially, it can be difficult to get a good PHP service for hosting web sites. The majority of web hosting companies are in the matter for a fast return on their money. They do not want to offer a full service, so it is common to be without PHP for 2-3 days. Equally, you can do nothing about this as support was unavailable, which is often the case. Finding the right PHP host solution can take many attempts to find the best solution. A reason in this is that not all the firms are commonly known or discussed.
These issues can make choosing the right PHP provider seem a scary task. However, there are guidelines to take to make the situation much easier.
A good PHP web hosting company will provide the following features:
a. Technical products. Software and programs including Cron, Python, CGI, MySQL, PHP or Perl need to be on offer. Even if you don’t know what they are, be happy to have them as they can be very useful later.
b. Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the volume of files (in gigabytes or megabits per second) that are transferred in and out of your server on a monthly basis – and ultimately determines the number of visitors that can view your website in any given month the more bandwidth, the more users. In this case a bandwidth of 75 GB is a good starting point; though many websites can use 1,000GB, 10,000 or more.
c. How much it should cost. Free does not always mean the best and low in price doesn’t equate to low in quality. It should be possible to get a satisfactory service for $10.
d. Statistics of web use. You would be surprised how important it is to have information regarding how many visits you have and who or what is linking to your site.
e. PHP web hosting script installers: These are among the essential features to be included in your PHP hosting search. One should get a PHP web host script installation pack, at no extra cost from the service provider. You should be wary of providers that ask you to pay extra money for PHP web host script installation pack. On such application is “Fantastico”, which comes free with cPanel in most cases.
Coming to the free PHP web hosting service providers- they can have a number of disadvantages associated with them. Since the web hosting company is providing the services for free, it is not possible for them to sustain the services for long, without any source of revenue. This revenue is generated by them, through advertisements put upon your website. These advertisements can be in the form of:
a. Banners
b. Pop-up adverts appearing on screen
c. Advertisements placed within new frames
The web site owner would have no control over these advertisements. This would clearly be a bad situation for a great number of firms to be in. Anecdotal evidence tells of the time one firm had advertisements for a rival product appearing on their site and this is not good. Unfortunately, as the service is free, there is not much that can be done to complain about it.
You will also find that these free hosted sites crash a lot. This is because they host a great number of sites.
Furthermore PHP web site hosting companies, that are offering free services are generally not able to offer the range of features, that even a cheap web hosting company can.
These factors suggest choosing the paid option is the way to go. Although it may cost a bit, the benefits will make it worthwhile.
In order to zero in on the right cheap web hosting service, you will have to keep the following things in mind:
i. Try to strike a balance between benefits and cost. Choosing the cheap option will mean some sacrifices which could include uptime, help desk services or perhaps security issues. You will need to know what is most important for you.
ii. If you want to have blogs, shopping carts or forums then installation tools would be good and this is where Cpanel could be handy. Cpanel can also assist with running centers of support and controlling MySQL databases.
iii. Services of support: 24/7 has to be your requirement. You can never predict a crisis so having this support is vital.
iv. How much disc space is available: The amount of content is on your site will impact on the disc space you need. Bear in mind any expansion before deciding what disc space you need.
v. Accounts for email purposes: Do not hesitate to get rid of a web host firm that provides cheap or shoddy email accounts. There are many rival firms who want your business so feel free to go with them if you want.
The harder part of your research comes now and it is seeking the companies which provide offers such as guaranteeing your money back if you are unhappy after 30 days or regarding uptime guarantees. These can be hard to find as they all cost money to promise. But seek them, because some firms are available to offer this, and with the advantages already mentioned above they can also offer a commendable service at a welcome price.
These ideas should be added to your own research to make a decision on who best to sign up with to meet your needs and budget.
After all your choices and signing with a provider, how can you tell you have made the correct choice? It isn’t hard, if you are satisfied with the price being low, having all the email accounts you need, having support always available, having statistics regarding traffic and the option of PHP and windows, then you can be happy with your choice.