New Webmasters Series, Part 1: Picking a Web HostMar 17 '03 (Updated Sep 04 '03) Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Sport and Outdoor
The Bottom Line There are a many web hosting companies out there. Read this review to see my personal recommendations as a new non-professional webmaster.
Update 8/9/03: Additional information about my experience with Bidforhost.com and several updates throughout the review. New Webmaster Series, Part I: About This Series: This is a work in progress, as I am still learning as I go, but I thought it important to discuss my experiences in the hopes that it will help someone else. Let me say right now that I am not an expert webmaster, nor the CTO of a large multi-national corporation. I am writing this piece from the perspective of person who is interested in all things Internet related and who wants to host a relatively small website for his family. As such, I know a little bit about a lot of different web standards. I’m moderately proficient at hand-coding basic HTML, but I much prefer to work in a WYSIWYG HTML editor like Adobe GoLive because things like tables, framesets and CSS give me a headache. I know what php, asp, and java are and how they are used, but I couldn’t write a script to save my life (I’ll let others do the heavy lifting). I understand the various protocols on the Internet like FTP, HTTP, telnet, POP3, IMAP, etc. and what each is best used for (anyone remember gopher?). In addition, I’m the type of guy who actually tries to read documentation to figure out how things work if I don’t already know how and failing that, I’m usually pretty good a figuring things out for myself by playing around with them. I’m a Mac user and other than the tiny website space that most ISPs provide and the space my .MAC Internet Services account provides, I haven’t really felt the need to look for any other web hosting until fairly recently. .MAC is a nice service, and it is what I host the pictures for most of my reviews here at Epinions on. Its slideshow feature is easy and good-looking. It also offers basic backup, great integration with OS X and an e-mail account. The only problem is that .MAC is limited and expensive if you need more than 100 MB of web space. In addition, it only allows you to host HTML/Java. If you need CGI, Perl, php, asp or any of the rest of the alphabet soup, then you are out of luck. Not to mention the fact that .MAC isn’t the fastest service on the planet, nor does it have 99.9% uptime. Recently I noted to my utter amazement that almost everyone in my family was now wired. When did this happen? ;-) Anyway, I saw lots of things on the Internet and said: “Hey! That would be cool to do something like that for my family.” Sadly, most of the “Hey! Cool!” stuff was written in one of the languages I mentioned above, and that meant that .MAC couldn’t handle it. Bummer. The Search Begins: So I started looking around a little. Most hosting companies I saw initially wanted between $40 - $200 a month for a hosting account, which is a bit more that I could justify spending just for a small web site. Then I discovered: http://www.findmyhosting.com/ They are an independent company that helps users find the best hosting plans for their needs. You can do a search for plans that meet certain criteria (like hosting space (the total amount of space you are allowed on the web server), monthly transfer (also called bandwidth, the amount of traffic to or from your site that is allowed per month), number of e-mail accounts, or even host platform (Linux, Microsoft, etc.- generally Linux hosts will be cheaper) ). In addition, they offer a certification process called Hosting Assured. Any company that displays the logo agrees to a basic list of ethics that they will abide by. If users have a problem with the company, they can contact findmyhosting.com for help. If the company doesn’t abide by the code of ethics and findmyhosting.com has to send them a warning, then they get “red listed” and this is noted on findmyhosting.com so you know that you ought to use caution if you are thinking of dealing with them. On top of this, you can also request a quote (from a single form) from up to 10 different web hosts. You tell them exactly what you need and they send you a quote via e-mail. You can compare hundreds of different plans, rate any web hosts that you do use, or find out answers to common questions that beginners usually have: http://www.findmyhosting.com/webhosting-guide.htm Findmyhosting.com does make it allot easier to find the web hosting plans that are right for you. Even with help, though, it can be hard to tell what hosting plan is right for you. I would make sure that the service you sign up for offers a money back guarantee. After all there are full year hosting plans for as little as $4.44 a year up to several hundred per month. The key is knowing what you want from a service and taking time to ask questions before you sign up. So far, none of my experiences with the various web hosts I’ve tried has been totally pain-free, but with a little forethought and planning you can avoid most problems and make the transition to your new web host smooth. The Checklist: Before you sign up for any web hosting plan, you really need to give some serious thought to a few things: 1) What do you want to use your web space for? Are you going to run a small business? Is it just personal or for family and friends? 2) Just how much web space will you need? Don’t think about your immediate needs, but try to think ahead. How do you see your needs slightly less than one year from now? Keep in mind that most web hosts count things like e-mail, public FTP, MySQL databases, etc. in your total disk space count. So don’t just think about the physical size of your web site when considering how much space you will need. 3) Are you comfortable with the basics of how to set up a web site? For example, do you know where you typically have to put your web site documents to serve them on the Internet? Do you know how FTP works and how to get files onto your server? If not and you have relatively modest requirements and you’re not really interested in learning, you might want to look into a web hosting service that offers a web-based editing interface like that from Zyweb: http://www.zy.com/ (I’ve not used this service, so don’t take my mention of it as an endorsement. Feel free to do a Google search to look for others.) 4) How critical is quick support (either live over the phone or via a live web interface)? Most “bargain” web hosts only offer support via e-mail. If you have a mission critical web site you might want to pay the money for a top-tier web host or perhaps even a dedicated server, but expect to pay A LOT more per month. Even if you don’t need live support, it is always a good idea to investigate support options. Do they offer a public user forum for support and FAQ? If so, take time to read through the comments of users (not just the pleased testimonials that the web host posts on their web site). These comments can be very revealing. Keep in mind, though, that unhappy people are generally more likely to post problems than satisfied customers are to post their positive experiences. 5) Related to #4: How critical is 99.9%+ server up-time? Up-time is the rating of how often the server remains on-line and available to serve web pages. You will never get a 100% server up-time guarantee. Again, if you have a critical need to make sure your server stays up and gets rebooted quickly if it does go down, you may want to pay for top-tier service. That being said, many bargain web hosts note that their servers are up 99.9% of the time, but most won’t guarantee it, and worse yet, some LIE about server up-time. 6) What other services (other than plain web hosting) do you think you will want or need? Do you want php or CGI or Perl or MySQL database access? Do you prefer to use Microsoft Frontpage? Most bargain web hosts do offer these features, but always be sure before signing up for a plan. 7) Are you expecting to need a lot of bandwidth for your server? If you expect to get a lot of traffic, make sure you find a plan that offers enough bandwidth for your needs and offers a quick and easy way to pay for more bandwidth if you need it. Some web hosts offer supposedly “unlimited” bandwidth and this might seem like a good deal. However, bandwidth is usually the most expensive thing that web hosts have to pay for, so it is highly unlikely that any web host that offers unlimited bandwidth is going to be around for long. If they are, then check the fine print. You may discover that they don’t really offer truly unlimited bandwidth. In short, stay away from providers that promise this. If you’ve answered these questions, you’re probably ready to look for a web host. However, there are a few other considerations. Keep in mind that very few bargain web hosts offer a free domain name registration (www.yourowndomainname.com) with their plans. Some offer to register your domain name for an additional cost. Some encourage you to go to a domain name registrar like: http://www.godaddy.com/ and get your own name. All you need to do is to find a domain name that is available and then pay a fee to register that name for a year (GoDaddy offers prices as low as $6 per year for multi-year domain name registrations, so it isn’t expensive). When you sign up for a web hosting plan you will typically need to tell your host what domain name you want to use with this account (this is why it is a really good idea to register BEFORE you go shopping for a web host, as the registration process can take a bit to become “active”). Update: Don't register your domain name through your web host if you can help it. I've heard LOTS of horror stories about people who register for a hosting account and domain name through their host only to discover that their web host won't let them transfer their domain name to another registrar later essentially forcing you to stick with them for hosting or abandon your domain name and get another. DO NOT sign up with a host that forces you to buy the domain name through them, you are only asking for trouble. Stick with a well-known and independant registrar like GoDaddy.com where you have complete control over your domain name(s). --------- After you sign up you should receive at least the following information: * A IP address. Typically, this is a static web address. You can access your web site with this address, but you really should get your own domain name since some services (like subdomains and mail) rely on the domain name and not the IP address to work properly. * A user name and password for your account (if your host is good, it should allow you to pick your own when you sign up). You will need this to access your web site control panel and the other services. This initial username and password are typically referred to as the administrator username and password because you have control over the entire web space you’ve paid for and can typically create other users to share the space with you. * At least 2 nameservers. Nameservers are often listed like this: ns1.yourwebhost.com ns1.yourwebhost.com Occasionally, they may give you IP addresses for the name server as well. Nameservers are important. When you register your domain name with a registrar, they need the name server addresses in order to “point” your domain to your web hosting account. Keep in mind that due to the way that nameserver propagation works on the Internet, it could take up to 24 to 72 hours (typically 24 to 48 hours) for any changes you make to be reflected so that when you type in www.yourdomainname.com, it resolves properly and displays your web site. Therefore, as soon as you get this information, be sure to change it with your registrar. If you register through your web host, you don’t need to worry about this because your web host will take care of it. Once you’ve registered your domain, you are now ready to actually sign up for a web hosting account. Allow me to walk you through my experiences... The First Web Host: As I mentioned, I don’t run a business. I just want a web site for my family that is more full featured than I’ve been able to offer with my ISP’s web space and .MAC. I was looking for a service that cost me less than $100 a year, total but that provided me with at least 1 GB of hosting space, at least 3 GB of bandwidth, unlimited POP3 e-mail accounts, e-mail aliases (e-mail addresses that forward mail to another “real” address), php, MySQL and unlimited subdomains (a subdomain is an address like “webmail.yourdomain.com” that can either forward to another web address or points to a different subdivision of your own web server). When I did some searches on findmyhosting.com, I came across a company called “bidforhost”: http://www.bidforhost.com/ Not only did they appear to offer everything I needed, but they ALSO did it for far less than I expected to pay. Their (at the time) top-of-the-line hosting package, cost $22.99 a year or $2.99 a month if you paid monthly (at the time). Please note that costs have gone up rather significantly to be more in line with what some other hosts offer. They offer e-mail support as well as a forum for users to ask questions or learn more about their service (which I think is a great feature). Feel free to browse it here: http://www.hostingclienthelp.com/forum/ However, Bidforhost.com has made the previously public forums private, so that you need to be a client of Bidforhost.com in order to access the special support area that used to be open to all. I will say that the private support forums have been VERY quiet lately. I was interested in this service, because, even with the domain name registration through GoDaddy, a full year of service would cost me less than $30 total. Wow. How can you go wrong? The answer is: You can’t as long as you are comfortable with e-mail support and you know what you need and what you are getting for your money. They also offer a 30-day money back guarantee. I signed up without blinking an eyelash. You have to pay for this service through PayPal, which means that you need to sign up for an account if you don’t have one. Still, the process is easy and you can pay via credit card or bank transfer from many areas of the world. I already have an established Premier PayPal verified account, so no problem there. I signed up and was set up with an account just a short time later. My experiences with Bidforhost.com have been somewhat up and down. Initially, support was superlative, but the owner, Stobe went away on vacation and it looked for a couple of months like he totally abandoned his business. Recently, Stobe has returned and the support level has gone back up. Stobe assures me that he's "back to stay" now. I used to have a complete discussion of CPANEL, the web based interface for your web site that many hosts use. I no longer have it on Epinions because of a bit of unpleasantness, but you can find the much revised and now fully graphical guide here: http://homepage.mac.com/aric/AricsCPANELDocs.zip It requires Adobe Reader 6.0 or higher. If the reader says the file is corrupted, then you are using v5.x, so please upgrade: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html I did run into one snag (which you won’t run into now if you sign up when you read this since the problem has been corrected): I used to prefer to use forum software called phpBBfm. This is a variant of the free phpBB that comes as a “quick install” option with many web hosting accounts. As you might guess, phpBBfm is written in php 4. (php is a type of textual programming language that is used pretty often to create dynamic web content. You’ve probably used phpBB if you’ve been on the Internet for a while. phpBB is an open source, free web-based forum hosting script that offers fairly simple installation and lots of features. phpBBfm (the “fm” stands for Fully Modded) adds a ton of extra features to phpBB. The phpBBfm project has been ended amid a firestorm of controversy over their lack of abiding by the open source license that governs phpBB and all offshoots like phpBBfm. phpBB works just fine from an account hosted by Bidforhost.com, but phpBBfm did not. In fact, many php scripts would not run properly on Bidforhost.com’s old servers. Why? What I didn’t know was that bidforhost.com ran all php scripts in safe mode. Safe mode restricts what a php script can do. If the script tries to do something that safe mode does not allow, the script may fail to run. Obviously if you are looking to run on of the many popular free php scripts like PostNuke, Gallery, etc. you’ll need to make sure that whatever web host you choose offers php with safe mode disabled. I notified the owner of the service of the problem and asked if he would turn off safe mode. He agreed to look into the situation. I decided to look around at other hosting options in case safe mode didn’t get turned off (it did, but more on that later). The Second Web Host: I found 2 more web hosts (both Hosting Assured) that were more expensive (~$90 a year for their top-tier plans), but promised more (more space, bandwidth, other features, etc.) than bidforhost.com. I e-mailed their support and asked them if they had php safe mode turned off. The first of those: http://www.esphinx.net/ responded within minutes of my e-mail. They don’t have safe mode turned on. They offer 1500 MB hosting space, 4 GB bandwidth and a bunch of other features. So then I asked them if they used CPANEL for site administration. They said no, they use Ensim. (More on CPANEL and Ensim later. I thought I would give them a try and see if it worked better than bidforhost.com for what I needed. I signed up and ran into my first snag. The e-mail containing my account information never showed up even though support said that they would have me up and running in an hour. The next day I had to send several e-mails before I finally was forwarded my account info. No one seemed to know why I didn’t get the account information. Not to be deterred. I logged in and started setting up my new web server. I transferred the phpBBfm forums I was working on to my new host. phpBB requires use of one MySQL database which I got ready to transfer to my new account, only to discover that I couldn’t create a new MySQL database. I thought this was odd, since the plan I paid for said that I could have unlimited MySQL databases. I knew how to set them up from my experiences at bidforhost.com. I knew where the create database button should be, but it wasn’t there. So I contacted tech support who told me that I couldn’t set up my own databases. I had to e-mail them every time I wanted to add a new database and THEY would have to create it for me. Let me explain something about MySQL databases. Most of you who haven’t played around with php and CGI probably don’t realize this, but many scripts use MySQL databases on your server to store information that they need (like usernames, passwords and other settings). If you don’t have access to at least one, then a lot of php scripts won’t work. If I had to wait for customer service to set up each and every database I wanted then it would be very inconvenient, because I couldn’t continue to work on that part of my website until customer service got around to creating the database and users I need. Even if I only had to wait 30 minutes for it to get set up, I found this unacceptable. Considering that I often work on my website very late at night, I could be waiting even longer for the databases I need to be set up. In addition I found that the Ensim control panel was not very well laid out, nor did it offer me as many features. For example, in order to set up a subdomain (subdomain.yourdomainname.com) I had to physically create a folder on the web server. Forget about subdomain redirection (sub.mydomain.com automatically takes you to www.google.com for example) unless I put an index.html page in that subdomain folder that redirected to the appropriate location. Not very graceful. I’ll discuss Ensim in more detail in the second part of this series. Between my issues with Ensim and MySQL database creation, I decided that esphinx.net just wasn’t for me. It is important to note that esphinx’s website does not have a lot of information on it. They don’t mention that you don’t have control over database creation directly, etc. This is why it is good to ask questions before you sign up for any plan. Live and learn. They were pleasant when I told them why I wanted to close my account and get a refund. They promised that I should receive a refund in a few days. I can’t really fault esphinx for my problems (other than for their lack of information about their service on their website) and I think that they would make a good host for someone, just not me. There was still one more host I wanted to check out. The Third Web Host: Update: After writing this review, I have since moved my hosting to the parent company of Hasweb, who hired me part-time a short while ago to provide tech support. I am leaving this section of the review exactly as-is since I wrote it long before I started working for the parent company, but in the interest of full disclosure, I felt it important to mention. ------------ The last web host that interested me from the hundreds of Hosting Assured companies was a company called Hasweb: http://www.hasweb.com/ Hasweb is a division of Dimehost.com. Hasweb is Hostdime.com’s “bargain” web host. When you sign up for service with them their support policy states that they can only answer questions via e-mail and only basic questions or problems. If you are new to web hosting you might want to think about going elsewhere for hosting since you probably won’t have “how-to” questions answered. The ultimate package that I signed up for cost about $90 for a year, just as Esphinx did, but hasweb.com gave me 4 GB of hosting space, 20 GB of bandwidth, Fantastico php script auto installer (for several popular php scripts), etc. They also use CPANEL 7.4.x as does Bidforhost.com. Unfortunately, not all went smoothly with the signup process. When you pay for your new account, if all goes well you should get an e-mail from Hasweb with your new account information immediately (which is great news for those of us who are impatient to get started ;-) ). There was a server problem when I finshed signing up and so I received an e-mail sans the important IP address information that I needed to get started. I wrote to Hasweb about the problem and didn’t hear back. The next day, I also wrote again and didn’t hear back. I then decided to give them a call, since they post a phone number for sales support if you need it (unusual for bargain web hosts). A young man answered the phone and after I told him I was Aric Pedersen and signed up the previous evening he told me that he had e-mailed me the account info. I told him I didn’t get it and asked if he would forward it to a different e-mail address. He did and I finally had the information I needed. Once I logged in to my site, I noticed the reason for not receiving the e-mail. For some reason, his e-mails were appearing in my new Hasweb account mailbox even though I had only just changed the nameservers at my registrar to point to Hasweb. Odd, but problem solved. Performance with Hasweb has been good. The server I am on is fast and fairly reliable. End of journey? Well, no. The Journey Comes Full Circle: Remember Bidforhost.com? I hadn’t canceled my account with them. Apparently, they were listening when I (and others) complained about safe mode, because they just announced on 3/12/03 that they moved to a brand new server that will offer even better speed, php safe mode is turned OFF (yay!) and we will have access to the Fantastico php script auto installer. In fact, existing users could take the option of transferring the files themselves (and getting moved to the new server immediately) or waiting a bit and letting Bidforhost.com move them transparently to the new server (but you’d still have to update the nameservers with your registrar). I decided to move the files myself and they had my new account set up and running in less than an hour after the announcement. Kudos to them for listening and offering a much-improved service. Update: Stobe of Bidforhost.com has returned from his hiatus, as I note above and things seem to have stabilized somewhat there. A hosting company doesn't have to be big to be good, but if you see that a company has only one employee, you might want to reconsider hosting anything critical with them because if anything happens to that one person then you will be left high and dry. I've since moved on to a different host (which, as I mentioned above is the parent company of Hasweb), which I am not going to review since they recently "hired" me on a part-time basis to provide tech support and thus any review I might give might be less than impartial. I still maintain my account at Bidforhost.com and do use the account for non-critical web work and testing. I will continue to monitor the progress of Bidforhost.com and see how things go. Much of Bidforhost.com's price advantage has evaporated, but if the support remains at a good level, it's probably worth the extra cost. Aric’s Final Recommendation: Finding a really good bargain webhost can be difficult. Invariably, bargain web hosts place more accounts on each server. It really depends on your needs. If you want a non-critical hobby website and price is your primary concern, then bargain webhosting may be a good choice. If you want top speeds and superlative uptime, you can't really expect to get this for a few dollars a month. If you are impatient or your site is mission critical, expect to spend up to several hundred dollars a MONTH for top-tier hosting and support. Be careful of any host making unreasonable claims like 100% uptime or "unlimited" disk space or bandwidth. No company can truly deliver consistantly on these claims, so be sure to read the fine print! Above all, TAKE YOUR TIME! Don't rush into anything. Ask questions, watch website speeds and availability and monitor the public forums if your potential host(s) offer them. Be absolutely sure you've done your homework and KNOW what you want and need the website for and how you can implement it PRIOR to signing up with someone. If you don't know the first thing about HTML or how the Internet works, you aren't ready for webhosting yet. Learn more about these things through books, magazines and on-line resorces. Once you feel comfortable with how to create web pages and understand basically how things like FTP, HTTP and domain name propagation work, then you will be ready to look for hosting. Remeber, it isn't the host's job to magically impart that knowledge to you. Their responsibility is to make sure your hosting is up and answer questions about the service itself. That being said, may hosts will be happy to help you with these basic sorts of questions, but you shouldn't rely on them as a crutch. You'll only get frustrated in the long run. The rest of the series: I have removed the rest of the New Webmaster's series. Some felt that it was out of place here. I respect that. Unfortunately, No one I've contacted at Epinions has shown the slightest interest in creating appropriate categories for these other reviews. Therefore I doubt that I'll be able to repost the entirety of this series on Epinions. My sincerest apologies to those of you whom I apparently offended by posting the other parts of this series here. Enjoy.  |
| Read all comments (4)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
