So, coming up to two years since this site was first created (thanks to MattG, who even paid for the domain and originally hosted it for me!), what do I now know about what to look for in an ideal web hosting provider?

Well, although a good price is often most people’s first priority, it is worth checking out a few other things first. For example, do other customers recommend them, either via their own sites, or on one of the many forums that cater for people’s need to share knowledge? If the hosting company publish their uptime (for example, Network Solutions report 99.9%)? Anything less than 99.5% indicates that they are having serious problems with reliability. A good indicator for finding the right company would be any awards recently won, such as NetworkSolutions “Find My Host Editor’s Choice Award” (June 2008). Why recent in particular? Because if someone waves an award from 2006 under your nose, you’ve got to ask what went wrong in the last 24 months…

Just how much disk space and bandwidth do you get for your money? If your site will be mainly text, with few images or videos, then you can probably go for a cheaper package, otherwise, it is always best to plan for your site to become more popular in advance, rather than finding out you have either incurred extra fees, or that your site will be down for the rest of the month. Network Solutions offer three packages, with varying disk space and bandwidth - you’ll also find that the amount of e-mail and FTP accounts, MySQL databases and directory pointers rise accordingly. The accounts available are Standard, Advanced and Pro. If you only intend your site to be viewed by family and friends, you will probably find the 25Gb of disk space, and 250Gb/month xfer allowance would suit your needs, and costs $11.95 monthly, unless you sign up for 12 months, in which case you save $1.99 a month. Unless you already run several sites, and envisage a high traffic trend early on, the Advanced package should meet your needs, with an 25Gb of space and 250Gb traffic allowed, on top of the standard figures, for just $6 more per month. (A 12 month contract will save you $.65 monthly this time). If however, you are perhaps transferring an existing site, and know your current stats show you need up to 750Gb of data transferring every month, or perhaps intend to host a lot of rich multimedia content, and so need the 100Gb of disk space, then the Pro package could be right up your street.

So, rather than going for the company that has the flashiest marketing schemes, or sponsors your favourite sports team, do a little research beforehand, and save yourself a lot of headaches later on. Check out the link above, and see which package most closely matches your needs.