How to choose a Web host Video

How to choose a Web host Video Transcript

^B00:00:00

>> One of the coolest things about the web is the capability to have your own piece of it, but how do you start a website? Well, you need somewhere to host it. I'm Tom Merritt, and I'll give you some tips on how to choose a web host in today's Insider Secrets. ^M00:00:12 [ Music ] ^M00:00:25 We're going to assume a few things. A) You have an idea for what you want to do on your website. That's important. And B) you've already watched our video on choosing a domain name. I'm going to tell three ways to do this. One uses blogging service. Another is a free way to create your own site. And the third is to pay for a web host. If all you need is a blog with your own domain name pointing to it, you got a couple options. The registrar where you registered your domain name can forward the address to your blog. That won't change the URL of your blog though. If you want your blog's address to actually be your name dot com, or something like that, a blog service like WordPress.com may let you point a domain name directly to your blog. Now, if you want to do more than just blog, you're going to need a web host. Places like Yahoo! GeoCities, and Google Pages will give you free web hosting with some limits on the amount of storage you have. They also may include ads in your pages. T35.com promises free web hosting with domain name and unlimited space and bandwidth, as long as you include their commercial message on each page. There are many other options out there. Just be careful you choose a legitimate one. Now, the most reliable way that gives you the most control is to pay for a web host. That's what I do for my own websites. But you still need to be careful picking that host. It sounds a little weird, but don't pay too little. Super discounts can mean a site doesn't have a lot of capacity, and it might suffer outages. And if it's five dollars a year, it probably is too good to be true. But don't pay too much, either. Shop around. There's no reason to pay hundreds of dollars a year for the same thing you can reliably get cheaper elsewhere. And watch out for contracts. A year contract with a discount on a monthly rate is pretty standard, but be sure you don't mind being locked in. And make sure you can get out of the contract easily if you don't like the service. Visit some hosted sites. Reputable web hosts will list some sites they host. Go visit them. See if they work well. Alternatively, find hosts from sites you like. Use a website like "whoishostingthis.com" for instance, to find out who hosts smaller websites you visit regularly and enjoy. Get referrals. The very best way is to get a referral from someone you trust. Nothing beats a personal recommendation. ^M00:02:39 And once you've narrowed down your choices to a few candidates, here's a few things to look for in comparison. How much storage space and bandwidth do they offer? What are the penalties for going over that limit? What services do they offer? Do you need PURL, PHP, CGI? Is it extra to add those? What operating systems do their severs use? Linux-based servers may be able to offer more free tools. What's their technical support like? Do you get a phone number, email address? Is it 24 hours? Try them out with a few questions before you subscribe. For instance, ask how many websites they run per server. You want the number to be low. Finally, how reliable are they? You can use a site like hosttracker.com to give you an idea of the speed of the host servers from different areas of the world. Then check any stats the web host claims for uptimes. Think about what uptime means, too. If they claim 99.99 percent uptime, that means they were down 54.84 minutes in a year. 99.9 percent uptime means they were down 6.91 hours in a year. And 99 percent uptime means they were down 3.6 days in a year. Finally, as with any online business, check the Better Business Bureau to see what kind of complaints, if any, have been lodged against the business, and how they've dealt with them. I know there's a lot to consider here, but if you put in the thought now, it can save you a headache when managing your website later. That's it for this Insider Secrets. I'm Tom Merritt, CNET.com. ^M00:04:05 [ Music ]