Tips to Choose Commercial Webhost

I found several tips to choose Commercial Web Host

1. Reliability and speed of access

   Make sure the uptime of this webhost is at least 95-99%. or maybe you can find host that has 100% uptime? Because my site down 2 days, I dont know why my visitor decreased a lot and my subscriber also drop from 46 into 41 T___T. So be careful to find it data.
   

2. Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

   Do you have many visitor each day at your blog? Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site. For example, this blog only 100-200 Unique visitor/day. And my Sexy Cosplay Photo Blog 600-700 Unique visitor/day.  So I can said that if 1 visitor need 100Kb to load my site, so 100×100=10MB/day. Is your web hosting able to cover it?

   Don’t believe directly any commercial web host that advertises “unlimited bandwidth”. The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exhorbitant bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows.
   

3. Disk space

   I will give U example to choose disk usage. Http://persusi.org only need 10MB, a large gallery web ( http://kierat.co.nr ) only spend 56MB. 1 wordpress blog with all database only 15MB (my persusi with 2 subdomain http://uang.persusi.org and http://video.persusi.org only took 37MB with so many plugin on it). So why you buy a lot of disk usage if you only need a litlle? You can compare with my site to decide how big your site will need a disk usage.
   

4. Technical support

   Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up for a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.
   

5. FTP, PHP, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, crontabs, fantastico

   If you are paying for a site, you really should make sure you have all of these. Note that some commercial hosts do not allow you to install PHP or CGI scripts without their approval. This is not desirable since it means that you have to wait for them before you can implement a feature on your site. “.htaccess” is needed if you are to customise your error pages (pages that display when, say, a user requests for a non-existent page on your site) or to protect your site in various ways (such as to prevent bandwidth theft and hotlinking, etc). Telnet or SSH access is useful for certain things, including testing CGI scripts, maintaining databases, etc. Cron jobs may be needed for programs that you need to be run periodically (eg once a day). Check to see if these facilities are provided. And fantastico is use for instants installation for forum, blog and many others facility.
   

6. SSL (secure server), MySQL, Shopping Cart

   If you are planning on doing any sort of business through your website, you might want to look out to see if the host provides these facilities. These facilities normally involve a higher priced package or additional charges. The main thing is to check to see if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will definitely need SSL if you plan to collect credit card information on your site.
   

7. Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

   If you have your own site, you would probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like sales@yourdomain.com, etc. Does the host provide this with the package? Does it allow you to have a catch-all email account that allows anyname@yourdomain.com to wind up being routed to you? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software? Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address?
   

8. Control Panel

   This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I would not go for a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such chores are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.
   

9. Multiple Domain Hosting and Subdomains

   For those who are thinking of selling web space or having multiple domains or subdomains hosted in your account, you should look to see if they provide this, and the amount extra that they charge for this (whether it is a one-time or monthly charge, etc). I like to use subdomain for my blog. So I can make many site in just one domain name.
   

10. Server

    Is the type of operating system and server important? Whether you think so or not on the theoretical level, there are a few practical reasons for looking out for the type of server.
    

11. Price

    I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it’s futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realize that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best. Its better pay more than regret it.
    

12. Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

    Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after many months or even more than a year), when I’m satisfied with the host, I often change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.
    

13. Resellers?

    Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.
    

14. International

    Make sure you have purpose what is your website visitor target. I mean, if you want to using your local language (for example Indonesia), U can use IIX server. So Indonesian people will load Ur website faster. But if U want foreign people read Ur blog, U can use other server. So they can easily open Ur site ^^
    

15. Others’ Reviews

    You should make it a point to check out what others have to say about the web host. Some of the places you can do this include: forum, groups, web review

    Don’t skip this step, or you might find yourself being suckered by a host that everyone else is steering clear of.

I forgot from what site I find this 15 tips. Thats why I editing it. But if U are the owner and you dont like your article published or want me to put Ur link, just let me know. I’ll fix it or remove it ^^