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Web Hosting Woes for Beginners
Every individual when it starts surfing the net for choosing
its hosting partner get confused by variety of offers. Most
of the beginners usually fall into trap of free hosting,
cheaper hosting and other stuff that lead them to land in
no man's land later on. All there efforts and time goes
in vein and he has a nightmare to restart working on things
again. There is no doubt that every one out there on internet
look for cheap or free hosting, it is very much important
to make decisions thinking of long term prospects. Here
are some reasons why:
1. Free sites or free hosting does not have any guarantee;
there is a chance to be removed tomorrow. The most important
reason I like to highlight that, it leads your site permanently
removed from search engines too. There are billions of sites
are coming up day by day. The popularity of site is much
depend up the maturity of it and it place in search engines
natural ways, once you get your site deleted from there
it is very hard to bring back the new things again as the
vacuum was immediately filled by others.
2. Free hosting or free sites are usually supported by
advertisements and other stuffs. You have created a free
site in sub domain and also find good free hosting. You
have done offline and online promotions to your customer's
friends and other people who are known to you. Here you
are falling in a trap, by promoting the ads and other stuffs
of free hosting provider. Also the persons who have book
marked your site will not find it again once it is removed
by the host.
3. There are hell and heaven difference between a top level
domain and a free sub domain. Domains are unique and represent
the status of you. No other competitor of yours can steal
your name and in matter of time your clients will memories
the name. Where as any one can have any amount of free sub-domains,
imagine your fate when your competitor starts doing that.
4. Imagine a good client found you on web and become interested
it your product and services. Before hiring your services
he definitely like know more about you or he will do a research
first whether he should consider to contact you. If you
hold a free hosting site the first impact of your will go
in his mind that you are not a serious seller. To prevent
this you should consider a personalized top level domain
and consistent hosting services.
5. When you find a hosting company offers services extremely
low price, consider twice before choosing. Do a small research
to find out why it is so cheap, even below the industry
standards. I always follow the principle that "Quality
Never Comes Low." When it comes to provide support
or services it involve some cost in manpower and other stuffs
which a company need to meet day today. Don't fall in trap
of fly by night operators, always begin with established
and trusted providers in industry.
6. Other mistake usually most of the beginners do is, not
keeping there backups at there own, but rely on hosting
service providers. Imagine the host's server went down or
free host removed the site, you are all stuck and have no
option to start again from scratch, which is extremely painful.
7. The most common mistake comes to my knowledge is, beginners
are not clear about there requirements. It is obvious that
no one knows what is required in future, but if your requirements
are clearly documented it will be easier to analyze choosing
the hosting services that suites your needs. Always consider
that there may be a possibility of shifting from static
site to a dynamic one or you may require using certain scripts.
It is an ongoing process and if documented properly can
help you a lot in near future.
Oops! Seems enough negative thoughts? Don't get the wrong
idea - consider following points also before taking the
decisions:
1. Not all free hosts are bad or decisive, there may be
an excellent host which is up-coming and can provide wonderful
services. They may offer free hosting to promote there services
so that they can have customers in there portfolio. But
remember those are limited time offers and will be closed
soon when they get there desired portfolio filled.
2. Cheap and affordable web hosting may turn to be a great
deal, if you carefully compare some of the affordable type
plans with some of the more expensive ones, you may discover
that there are lots in common between them in reality. Here
you always try select which host can have better server;
updated software's and provide you quality support in practical
terms.
3. Not all the free websites are going to be removed without
notice or provide a bad reputation for your company. There
are services from giants like Google's Blogger or Yahoo's
Geocities will help you to increase your link popularity
if used effectively.
4. Also consider reading my previous article (a novice
one) "choosing the right hosting solution" here
at http://www.arun.info/choosing-hosting-services and also
do a net search i.e. example search term "how to choose
the right hosting" which will give you an opportunity
to read other articles written by experts in the industry.
Finally, when you choose a host - always think that it
is the best friend of your site. When you make a friend
in real life you always consider lot of things before choosing
and also overlook minor mistakes to keep a long term relation.
A web host is a real friend for you as it provides your
business keep running online 24 hours a day and 365 days
a year.
Cheers !!
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