Understanding technicalities of web hosting solution

solutions, which I believe is critical in evaluating suitable web hosting service providers.
In this instalment I will try and unravel the technicalities of web hosting solution.
It is important to ask for the uptime service of your prospective web hosting solution.
Uptime is the online time guaranteed by your web host, most web host service providers would tell you that they offer 99 percent to 99,98 percent uptime.
This does not mean that your website is going to be online all the time but rather reflects that the company that is hosting your site is going to be online for about 99 percent.
All companies will make you read their terms and conditions, which we of course never finish, you cannot afford to under estimate the importance of these.
This is where the important nitty-gritties are laid out and most of them hide these in the terms of service agreement, because they know that a few people actually read these small prints.
When a service provider claims that they are available for 98 percent, you should not take this figure at face value. Though 98 percent might sound perfect when you dig deeper and take it that there are 720 hours in a month, 98 percent of that is 705 hours you will realise that you will be losing 15 hours every month.
When users often find your website offline, they will get discouraged from visiting it the next time especially when its still new.
Google search engine will give you low hits and rankings if you are discovered offline periodically.
Test the speed of your web hosting by pinging the domainname.com. This can be done by raising the command prompt, type ping then the name of domain.
The longer it takes, the slower it will likely be for users to reach it, unless if it is being hosted in a foreign country.
Normal pings for local hosts should be around 80ms anything above 100ms would be very slow.
To test the prowess of your web hosting provider, you can run a script to check from this link (http://icms.info/uploads/files/check.zip) on your hosting. This script tests how well your hosting company executes various scripts. Save the script to your local disk, unpack it and upload to your web space then call the script from your browser like http://www.yourdomain.com/check.php.
You should not have failures in any section but you may have some warnings.
Warnings will probably not affect your installation. If it fails, it proves how weak the hosting company is. Alternatively you can give them and ask them to manually run it for you. For serious commercial web hosting they will offer you database space for your files, e-commerce, cPanel, ispConfig, many email accounts, pop mailbox, SSL, CGI, extra bandwidth to accommodate a busy website and good storage for website files. Good web hosting solution providers should not fall short of these.
For profitability ensure they offer enabled interactive features with access to your own cgi-bi directory, CGI scripts are the backbone of all functions in a website.
It basically records whatever activity you do online, like post a comment, reply to chats, fill a form, you will be running a script of a type.
Those who do online transactions would definitely need a secure shell via https or simply have a gateway via the popular Google checkout or Paypal.
E-commerce websites have the ability to help you sell your products online, even when you are not planning on selling anything yet, which is the most popular case in Zimbabwe. Always choose a web hosting service that offers a simple clear-cut e-commerce platform and your web designer should embed this in your website.
When you switch your hosting company as your company grows, for instance, you will appreciate this need.
Web host with a Cpanel allows you install many plug-ins in few steps. If you are planning to have apps such as weblog, then not having Cpanel is like learning hacking in widows, introducing a new problem to your bigger one. Web security demands higher priority. You need to make sure that your web host has excellent security measures in place to prevent hackers from gaining access to your site and your customers’ information.
Lately websites have been ravaged by cyber attacks and continuous security reviews will need to be implemented.
You should know how often they back up their servers and the regular schedule and that you always have access to your website’s root menu.
This, however, does not guarantee security against attacks but it’s a fall back plan in case you are attacked.
Back-up should never be left in the hands of the service providers, one should have their own back-ups too in case the unexpected happens.
Complaints against poor performing web hosts are always captured online, just to be sure before you are the next victim, try a Google a search of the web hosting company. Customer support has to be a top priority for any web hosting company. You cannot afford to have your website offline because the providers have knocked off after hours or are on holiday.
They will need to guarantee support as and when needed 24-hour call centres or live chat with your providers are cheap and convenient ways to get support
Anti-spam policies have to be fully understood otherwise all your emails may be blocked or you might also end up blocking all emails including those you want.
If not properly defined rogue web hosting providers will get most of their e-mails blocked because they are used to pushing spam emails.
AIM mailbox has the same weaknesses where their spam guards are too strong to block even the wanted mails. If you are planning your own web hosting solution, you should be fully aware of the difference between windows and Linux servers, in short, Linux servers are cheaper, stable and much secure than windows server systems.
After a careful consideration of these tips, you are now empowered to choose the best web hosting solution provider of choice. Go ahead and hook it up online!