Web Hosting is perhaps the most prolific service industry going on today. It is an open business model in which anyone can lease a webserver, or sign up as a hosting reseller and be in business with a simple web site template.

It is also a business without any built-in checks and balances. Purchasing web hosting can be like visiting the dice tables in Las Vegas, chances are good that your first roll won't be a winner, UNLESS, you know the right questions to ask, and how the answers will impact the performance of your web site. Knowledge is the most powerful weapon in the search for the perfect hosting solution. Knowledge can mean the difference between having a top performing web site, or a useless kludge that no one will visit, even when it isn't down.

Hosting Jargon

To begin, here are a few of the terms that are associated with the hosting industry

• Space - The amount, in megabytes, of storage space on a server.
• Bandwidth - The amount, generally in gigabytes, of transfer allocated for your use. For example, if you have a 4 MB *.mp3 file, and 10 people download it, that would use 40 MB of bandwidth.
• Control Panel - A graphical user interface (GUI) that allows you to control the features of your hosting account, such as email functions, databases, password protect folders, monitor resource usage, much more depending on the control panel system used.
• Databases - Interactive web sites such as discussion forums and shopping carts often store information in a database. Common database management systems are mySQL, MSSQL and Access.
• ASP (Active Server Pages) and PHP (Parsable Hypertext Preprocessor) - Programming languages that can be used to build web applications that interact with a database such as shopping carts, bloggers, photo galleries, discussion boards and much more. Literally thousands of applications written in these languages are available, many of them free for you to install and use on your web site.
• FTP - File Transfer Protocol, A system which a user can transfer files from their local computer to a remote web server using readily available software such as WS_FTP or CuteFTP.
• FrontPage Extensions - Tools installed on a web server that allow a user to connect to their hosting account using Microsoft FrontPage.

UNIX or Windows?

There are two main hosting platforms in the hosting industry: UNIX and Windows.
A platform is the server operating system used to run the computer that your site is hosted on.

Unix servers typically run some variant of Linux: Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian, CentOS, Fedora. These all operate the same way and are generally stable and secure.

Windows web hosting servers run Windows Server.

Choosing which platform to host on will depend on your needs. As a rule, UNIX hosting is more stable, secure, and scalable. For users new to the web site game, Control Panels written for the UNIX platform are more feature-rich and easier to use.

Windows on the other hand, is 100% compatible with Microsoft Technologies such as ASP.NET.

The primary reason to choose Windows hosting would be if you plan on using those specific technologies. Otherwise, UNIX is by far your best choice.

NOTE: Some UNIX hosting services provide "soft" ASP solutions such as Chili!Soft. Skip it. They don't work very well. If you need ASP functionality, host on windows.

SECOND NOTE: Just about anything that can be done with ASP.NET can be done on a UNIX platform running PHP.

The Host Quest

There are millions of web hosting companies, literally, a Google search returns 549,000,000 hits on the search term: "Web Hosting". Finding the right host provider among the hosting jungle is a challenge. Finding the best Bagel shop in NYC is easier. However, a bad bagel might give you heartburn, a bad web host provider will cost you money, and credibility if you are going to do business on the web.

Things to look for and questions to ask:

The GOOD DEAL

No where else does the time-proven adage "If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is" been more true.

BEWARE of the $5.95 a month for 10 GB hosting plan. There is only one way a hosting company can offer that kind of deal....They are OVERSELLING! Do the math.

Lets assume a web server has a 200 GB hard-drive. Of this 40-50 GB is used by the system, leaving 150 GB left for user files. At 10 GB per client. that means each server can hold 15 clients.

15 X $5.95 = $89.25/mo. The total cost of operation for a web server costs quite a bit more monthly than $89.00. They are losing their shirts if they are doing that.

The Reality: They are not putting 15 sites on that server. They are putting 2-3 HUNDRED sites on that server and gambling that you will not use more than 100 MB, as the typical web site that doesn't have a lot of audio or video is well under a 100 MB in size.

The end result is, some of those 2-3 hundred clients do attempt to use their allocated resources, this means your sites performance will be slow, and will be plagued by frequent downtime.

Go ahead, pay a little more. Beware the overseller.

The question to ask:
On average how many clients do you put on each server?

Then you do the math....

Technical Support Response Time

Look for host providers that offer 24/7 support, and list a number for phone support. If all they have is a help desk program, and do not list a support phone number, you may be dealing with a garage level hosting company owned by someone who does web hosting as a sideline.

When this is the case and your web site is down, you need almost instantaneous response. Not "when they get to it".

The question to ask:
What is your average response time to technical support requests?

For critical support issues such as web site down, the response from them should be: less than 10 minutes.

For non-critical support, such as a control panel glitch: less than 4 hours.

The Uptime Guarantee

Many web hosting companies proclaim a 99.9% uptime guarantee. That means they are promising they will not be down more than 43 minutes a month. Understand that there are circumstances that the web hosting company cannot control: router failures, outages because of a failure external to the hosting company's datacenter, or the datacenter where the hosting company leases its servers.

It will be often spelled out in a disclaimer what events are not covered under the uptime guarantee.

The question to ask:
What is your average uptime, and how do you back your guarantee?
The response should be a percentage at or close to what they guarantee, and, there should be a scale by which you are refunded or discounted on your next months hosting based upon the amount of time down beyond the percentage they guarantee.

They should also be ready to provide detailed reports as to why they were down.

The Physical Connection to the Internet

There are around a dozen private backbone providers that make up the core connectivity to the internet.

Depending on the size of the hosting datacenter, they may have a direct connection to a backbone, or, there may be several layers, or nodes between them and the backbone. The more layers they have means more chances for upstream failures that could mean downtime for you.

The question to ask:
What is your connection to the internet, and how many hops are you from a backbone?

They should have a minimum of a OC3 line. Fewer hops the better.

In Conclusion:

These few pointers should get you going. If the hosting company is able to satisfactorily answer these few questions, you may have a winner on your hands. In addition to querying the web host, do a little research online to see how they rate, check out their customer testimonials. If they don't have any publicly posted, ask if they have any they would share.

Good Luck in your "Host Quest"

John Atkinson
Nortek Media Solutions

John Atkinson is a Technical Writer with 10 years experience in the web hosting industry as a system administrator.