Saturday, June 4, 2011

Find Hosting for Your Forum

By William MacMahon


Choosing the right web host for your forum can be quite a frustrating experience. If you go by the advertisements, most hosts would appear to be good for your particular needs. But there have been cases where web host have started out by providing great service, only to get mired later - overselling the shared servers, providing low service quality, not responding to problems promptly, etc. Such experiences lead to a renewed search for a new host yet again.

Finding reliable in formation before you make a decision can benefit you greatly. The following advice will hopefully help you find the right host for all your needs.

Web hosting and simple facts

As the business world becomes more and more dependant on the Internet, the choice of a web hosting provider is becoming very important. A wrong choice can leave you in the lurch. You may need to choose a good web host for a variety of purposes - making an e-commerce website, setting up a personal web page, or sharing data easily with all your employees across the world. Whatever be the reason, your choice would be critical. You should not focus only on the price and value of the web hosting package; you should also take into consideration things like high quality service and good web connections.

Given you now know the basics, there are techniques and strategies people can follow to find the best host for their needs.

Here you'll find a list of Web Hosting Companies that can help you with your forum hosting. The following companies run forums on their servers and have been known to do so economically and efficiently.

Leading Web Hosting Companies that support Forums (Arranged alphabetically)

1. Hostgator - www.hostgator.com

2. Hostpapa - www.hostpapa.com

3. Hostmonster - www.hostmonster.com

4. Webhostingpad - www.webhostingpad.com

5. ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com

6. Powweb - www.powweb.com

7. Bluehost - www.bluehost.com

8. Webhostingpad - www.webhostingpad.com

Having a list of these companies is one thing, choosing which one to go with is another. You would ask questions based on your own needs and requirements. For instance, how much space is required or how much bandwidth would require.

If you want to host a forum, you will need round about 50 GB bandwidth per month and on average, 10 GB of space to store items. These figures are a general example and the needs of your website may differ. If the website you run does not have many images, you may not need a lot of space. However, if your site had a large number of graphics, the opposite would be the case. The host you choose should be able to provide you with information about what you require.

Stability is vital

It is not a good experience to move your website from host to host. This can cause downtime and a number of detrimental effects to your business. This is why stability is vital. Finding a reliable and established host is a must. Ensure you do a lot of research and know the industry well. If something seems not right, then leave it alone.

The fee

The price you pay is always important to people. This will come to a number of issues including bandwidth issues and storage space. There are three main types of hosting options.

Hosting that is shared

Shared Hosting

Dedicated Hosting

The size of your budget and forum will impact on your choice.

Here is some more information about these options.

Virtual Private Server - Combines the following two services. A person will use the VPS with others but the resources of the server are shared in such a way that each firm has their own well defined areas. This ensures you have resources solely for you and there is no competition for the right. This works well for many firms.

Shared Hosting - The host owns the server and rents the service out to many people. This is the cheapest option but quality can suffer if too many people make demands on the server. This can see sites running slowly or note that are out a lot of the time.

Virtual Private Server - this is like a combination of the two options above. Although you share a Virtual Private Server (VPS), the server resources are divided up in such a manner that you get dedicated resources and do not have to compete for them continuously. This option gives you the best of both worlds.

Service

This is another major deciding factor in your search to find the best web hosting provider for your forum. Good service and technical support form the backbone of the web hosting service. You may safely choose a provider which is very popular, since a large number of clients is a good indicator of the quality and stability of the web host. Just remember that they are also the ones who are under the maximum amount of resource strain, since they are servicing such a large number of clients. If your web host has too many clients, service may suffer or your site may become slow because of resource competition on the server.

Always find out what level of support is on offer from your host. Perhaps you can find existing or previous clients for an opinion on the firm. The following questions may help you make a better choice.

Will they provide a speedy solution to problems?

Can the solutions be relied upon?

Are the technicians always on call?

Do they provide support on holidays and out of normal working hours?

Do they respond quickly by email?

Do they make service a priority or are they prone to evasions and excuses?

Positive answers to these questions would indicate a good firm to choose.

The final word

Searching for a good web hosting provider can be quite a daunting task, but the above guide will help you in your efforts considerably. Just remember one thing - choosing a web hosting provider is like getting married divorce is a messy affair you'd rather not go through! Look around, do your research well, and then take a final decision after weighing all the pros and cons.




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