Monday, October 3, 2011

Web Hosting for PHP

By Matt Ewing


You are reading this article because you are looking for a good web hosting service. And of course you would like to get the best deal that you can afford. Choosing a web hosting service is a decision that is going to have long term effects, because you may use it to support your business for many months or even years.

In the modern age the PHP style of hosting a site is now very inexpensive and offers many benefits which will please a user.

Before moving on with the main issue, a little information about PHP would be helpful. It is a very popular server side programming language that can be embedded into HTML. Its popularity has been aided by the following features:

a. It has no charge.

b. It can be used easily and with little trouble

c. It is able to be considered a fully object orientated language

d. It is not tied to one platform.

e. Its speed on the Linux server makes it very effective in building complex, and large web applications.

f. It is a great tool for programmers of an advanced nature and is suitable to be used on web pages

g. PHP also integrates very nicely with MYSQL.

In order to choose a PHP web hosting service, you need to take a number of factors into account. First of all it is not all that easy to get a satisfactory PHP web hosting service. Most of the web-hosting companies are in the business for a quick buck. They don't really care about the service, so situations like your PHP domain hosting being down for 2-3 days, and you not being able to do anything about it, because no support was available, are quite frequent. Most people go through a long trial and error process, before they find the right PHP web hosting solution. This is because the best web hosting companies are usually not very well known.

These factors make selecting the best PHP provider a very hard task. However, it is possible to find some advice to follow.

A good PHP web hosting company will provide the following features:

a. Technical products. Software and programs including Cron, Python, CGI, MySQL, PHP or Perl need to be on offer. Even if you don't know what they are, be happy to have them as they can be very useful later.

b. Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the volume of files (in gigabytes or megabits per second) that are transferred in and out of your server on a monthly basis - and ultimately determines the number of visitors that can view your website in any given month the more bandwidth, the more users. In this case a bandwidth of 75 GB is a good starting point; though many websites can use 1,000GB, 10,000 or more.

c. How much it should cost. Free does not always mean the best and low in price doesn't equate to low in quality. It should be possible to get a satisfactory service for $10.

d. Web Statistics: Getting accurate web statistics like the amount of traffic your web site is getting, and the sites that are linking to you, are information that you need to have.

e. Script installers for PHP web hosting. It is vital to be aware of these and include them in any search you undertake. An installation pack should be obtained for free from your provider. Do not trust providers that ask for a fee for this service.

Coming to the free PHP web hosting service providers- they can have a number of disadvantages associated with them. Since the web hosting company is providing the services for free, it is not possible for them to sustain the services for long, without any source of revenue. This revenue is generated by them, through advertisements put upon your website. These advertisements can be in the form of:

a. Banners

b. Pop-up adverts appearing on screen

c. Frames including advertisements

The web site owner would have no control over these advertisements. This would clearly be a bad situation for a great number of firms to be in. Anecdotal evidence tells of the time one firm had advertisements for a rival product appearing on their site and this is not good. Unfortunately, as the service is free, there is not much that can be done to complain about it.

Another problem with free web hosting sites is that, since they usually have thousands of websites running on a single server, they are prone to frequent crashing.

Furthermore PHP web site hosting companies, that are offering free services are generally not able to offer the range of features, that even a cheap web hosting company can.

These issues make it advisable to go for the paid option as opposed the free option. Paying a bit of money will be more than recouped by the extra features obtained.

To fully grasp the situation regarding the best web hosting provisions of cheap providers, try to consider these issues:

i. You should look for balance among the benefits you aim for. This is because when you opt for a low cost service, you have to make some sacrifices which may affect uptime, customer service or even security. So think about it and determine what would be the ideal combination of benefits you would like to have.

ii. If you want to have blogs, shopping carts or forums then installation tools would be good and this is where Cpanel could be handy. Cpanel can also assist with running centers of support and controlling MySQL databases.

iii. Support services: You should opt for nothing less than 24/7 support services. It is an essential feature as you never know when you can meet a crisis for which you will require expert help.

iv. Available space on the disc: Depending on how much content will be on your site, how much disc room you will require will alter greatly. It is also good to consider future development when planning how much disc space to have.

v. Email Accounts: If a web hosting company acts cheap with essential facilities like email accounts, you should not think twice before dumping it. Web site hosting is a very competitive business, so you will be easily able to get a provider that offers unlimited email accounts.

The harder part of your research comes now and it is seeking the companies which provide offers such as guaranteeing your money back if you are unhappy after 30 days or regarding uptime guarantees. These can be hard to find as they all cost money to promise. But seek them, because some firms are available to offer this, and with the advantages already mentioned above they can also offer a commendable service at a welcome price.

These ideas should be added to your own research to make a decision on who best to sign up with to meet your needs and budget.

After all your choices and signing with a provider, how can you tell you have made the correct choice? It isn't hard, if you are satisfied with the price being low, having all the email accounts you need, having support always available, having statistics regarding traffic and the option of PHP and windows, then you can be happy with your choice.




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