There’s probably not a day that goes by where most people access the internet for one reason or another. Websites are available to share Do-It-Yourself project instructions, cooking recipes, music videos, news, and many other things. So, when you think about the minuscule amount of physical phone book use and the massive use of the internet, it’s no-brainer to determine the importance of presence on the World Wide Web. There are several reasons to have your own website and when you make the decision to move forward with it, you will need to use a web hosting company. Read below for some things to consider when considering a web host.
Types of Hosting Offered
Every website need is different. Some pages will need to allow payment processing from customers while others are not meant to be interactive at all. For those types of websites that are just informational, their needs will be less than other types of websites. Cloud hosting, clustered hosting, and grid hosting are a few of the hosting types currently available. Since other computers in the cloud can compensate if hardware crashes, cloud hosting is probably the most reliable of the three mentioned here. If you need to be able to offer better utilization for your customers, you can have multiple servers hosting the same content with clustered hosting.
Reliability
The availability of a website is measured by the percentage of a year in which the website is publicly accessible and reachable via the internet. If your primary customer stream comes from website traffic, it would be in your best interest to have your site hosted by a company that can provide a high level of reliability. Most host companies will disclose their scheduled downtime hours by the year in a Service Level Agreement. Maintenance downtime can’t be avoided but you don’t want your site hosted by a provider that’s down more than it’s up.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as picking a website name and building your site. You have to consider where you are, where you’re trying to go, and then decide which web hosting company will allow you the freedom and flexibility to get there. If branding is a big deal for you, you may want to create your own domain name. There are lots of options and you want to do your homework before making a decision.
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