Don't
Make These Hosting Mistakes
Don’t Make These Hosting Mistakes!
Here are 10 true-life hosting mistakes our customers tell us they
learn from and how to avoid them.
1. Falling For The Price Trap
The call of low hosting prices is like a siren. There are reasonable
budget-hosting solutions and there are outrageously low budget hosting
almost guaranteed to become a nightmare. If the price makes you
wonder how they make money then you can look forward to an extremely
slow site or even denial of service because they maxed out the bandwidth.
Not good. Trust your instincts stay clear.
2. Inexperienced Reseller or Not Researching Your Reseller
Hosting with a reseller is not a bad thing. In fact sometimes resellers
give you very good support. But you need to do your second layer
research. Sometimes a reseller is very good all around but inexperienced
especially when it came to scripts and server environments. Some
resellers also couldn’t accommodate customer requests because
the server administrators wouldn’t work with them under any
circumstance. This usually happens when the server administrators
are bulk sellers who are disconnected from the end customer.
If the server administrators are not reliable or cannot accommodate
you, don’t hope your reseller can. Resellers should also have
done their homework and know their servers as if their own.
3. Not Clearly Defining Your Requirements.
As an ongoing process you should keep a list of what resources
your site needs and add to that list as you grow. One Webmaster
was changing their static HTML pages to dynamic, which meant scripts
were going to be used. Since the Webmaster didn’t have a clear
idea of what he would like to install and what these scripts required,
he only found out after moving, the host servers were not compatible
with the scripts. He lost months of work moving the sites in and
out again.
So, maintain a list. It also makes it easier when you need to upgrade
because you can show the list to your host. If you use a service
such as HostVoice the list is even more helpful because it can go
out to multiple hosts at one time who’ll quickly evaluate
if they have what you’re asking for or not.
4. Purchasing Hosting In An Auction
It might be a good place to pick up a deal but then you’ll
need to go back and review the first point. This is not to say all
auctioned hosting is completely unreliable but in case you haven’t
noticed auctioned items have a good deal of terms and conditions
attached, usually more than if purchased through the website. This
makes your package very inflexible. Unless you review closely those
terms or if you have a small static HTML pages with little ambition
for the site, stay away or pay their regular website prices. This
way the host will more likely work with your requirements.
5. Forgiving A Host’s Bad Or Limited Website
If the host can’t or won’t take time to craft an informational
site of their own, most likely they won’t be too concerned
about yours either. Cookie cutter sites are a dead giveaway.
6. Putting All The Eggs In One Basket
If you manage several sites, it seems like a good idea to have
everything in one account. You can simplify your billing and get
a better deal. Not always. We know of some webmasters who lost hours
or work time because they couldn’t work on anything since
all their sites were down. If your site generates income and they
are interconnected, having all sites down at once is bad business.
There is an option to this though. Ask your host if they’ll
be willing to split your account across 2 or more physical servers.
7. Taking Testimonials At Face Value
Not all testimonials are created equal. You need to ask other webmasters,
talk to their customers. If they don’t list customer names
on their site, ask them if you can contact any of their customers
or if they’ll contact you. If the host refuses, beware.
8. Not Keeping A Record Of Their Contact Information
Most of us are happy with email, forum and live support. One Webmaster’s
host was down for days. This also meant the host’s own site.
The Webmaster couldn’t contact them at all because he hadn’t
taken the time to record a physical address or telephone number.
24/7 telephone support is still desired. When your site is down
indefinitely and you’re losing visitors even sales it’s
guaranteed you’ll want to talk to someone.
9. Relying On Host Backups
This happens far too often. When a customer’s site went down
indefinitely, they were stuck. They couldn’t put the site
with another host because they didn’t have any backups of
their own. They would have to start from scratch, which would be
just as bad because the site was rather mature. Always keep your
own backups.
10. Trusting your host to have the latest software
Internet crime is and viruses are more prevalent than ever. New
software or the latest versions are meant to plug security holes.
A customer had their site hacked twice in 2 months only to find
out the host was not up to date with their software. Check with
the host before you order what versions they are running and how
often they make updates.
About the Author HostVoice.net ( http://www.hostvoice.net)
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