What art most important features to look for in a web hosting service?

Question

I am new at web design, and in the process of trying to find a good web hosting service. I plan on having lots of videos and photos on my sites, and was wondering what kind of features are the most important for me to be looking for when searching for a web host. Are some servers faster than others? If so, which are the fastest? And is it better to go with a windows or linux server? Are there any other important features that I need to look for? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

Good questions!

There are many things to consider when choosing web hosting.. I found this article that talks about many important issues about web hosting:

http://www.alreadyhosting.com/articles/g...

That sites also has nice reviews!

Answer 2

Windows or Linux probably not much difference for you. A good place to look for techie "consumer reports" on hosts is http://www.webhostingtalk.com but if you're not especially technically savy it may be a bit over your head.

You want good uptime, enough space, support for any software you KNOW IN ADVANCE you'll need on the host IN THE FUTURE! (may be hard to figure, but give it your best guess and be generous. All at a very decent price. And with a "control panel" YOU can handle with ease.

At the above website I found http://www.asmallorange.com to be a very satisfactory host, at a good price. But that's me.

Answer 3

The features you need, support and up time. I rate the best web hosts on my site http://www.webmastercritic.com

Answer 4

Well, it depends on how much you want to spend.

1. If you're willing to pay $20+/monthly for hosting I recommend:

http://www.mediatemple.com

http://www.slicehost.com

2. If you want something cheaper I recommend Dreamhost http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html

Their standard price is $119.40/year ($9.95/month if you pay yearly) but they currently have a promotion. You can use the promo code PLUS at sign up page and get the $50 discount + 2 Free domain names. This way you get them for $69.40/year ($5.78/month). You can use their huge Disk Space and host unlimited number of subdomains and domains on a single plan.

Disk space: 500 GB

Bandwidth: 5000 GB

2 Free domain names

Price: $5.78/month ($69.40/year)

Answer 5

1. BIG storage of course, for your videos and photos.

2. Large file transfer for your videos and photos

3. PHP enabled

4. Of course, FREE! I still think it's very unreasonable to charge for something that the company knows you can get for free.

Here's something to get started with...

This one is the BEST one out there!

-FREE

-250 MB STORAGE

-100GB TRANSFER

-PHP and MYSQL ENABLED

http://www.000webhost.com/68268.html

Answer 6

To make a website you need a domain and webhosting.The best way to buy a domain for free is to purchase your domain and webhosting together. In this way it is possible to get your domain for free. Some webhosting companies offer this as a gift .Bluehost is the best one

http://www.bluehost.com/track/bluehostwe...

Answer 7

You need a fast web host supporting multimedia with huge bandwidh. Take a look at: http://bluehost-service.atspace.com . I’m sure it would work for you and fulfill all your requirements. They have a really great offer & I have used them for over 3 yrs now, and have never had a single problem with them. Their service is really great and easy to use.

Answer 8

Bandwidth and disk space is important for you, linux servers are the fastest.  I can provide hosting for you starting at $1.99 per a month and a domain for $9.00 per year

Answer 9

The most important feature is reliability at a good price. You don't want you site to go offline. You want your site to be FAST as well. I also want to be able to host unlimited domains/subdomains and to have unlimited band available. Also I want tons of databases available. All for less than $10. Any more than this is a rip off.

IX  are the best for all this.

Btw,

if you are wanting to have videos on your site, the shrewd way to do is to upload them on youtube (where they also get traffic on their own right) and then just embed them into your site so you won't use any band and you have youtube reliability.

Linux is the most used,  you'll come across tons of scripts that need linux to run.

Answer 10

Since you're having lots of videos and photos, you want LOTS of and I mean LOTS of bandwidth (amount of data transfer). Web space is important too especially with videos taking up a lot of space, but you really need bandwidth to actually let users see the videos. And,  you want good uptime, at least 95%. What's the point of all that space and bandwidth if you can't use it?

Also, it depends on if you're planning to do lots of cgi/php/other similar languages scripting. If you do, you may want to find places that have more than one MYSQL database.

But for your purposes, the most important things are 1) bandwidth 2) webspace