This is day two of my Booming Business of Blogging Experiment. Follow along over the twelve month period as I take the steps required to (hopefully!) meet the experiment’s goals. There will be many helpful tips and tricks for you along the way and no doubt there will also be lessons where you can learn from my mistakes. Today’s topic is about selecting a hosting company for my blog. Other topics can be found throughout the Booming Business of Blogging Experiment series of posts.

Selecting a hosting company for my blog

A web hosting company is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organisations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web without the need for expensive hardware and technical expertise. Hosting companies provide space on a server they own for use by their clients, typically in a data center. Hosting companies are not all created equally and therefore there are some key questions to ask before selecting the hosting company for your blog.

Support

Does the hosting company offers 24/7/365 technical support by phone and email? (Hopefully you will never need it but it definitely makes sense to make sure help is at hand and when you need it!

Do the offer the payment methods you require? (At the time I signed up I was looking for a company that would accept direct deposit payments due to a maxed out credit card. Like with any decisions, it’s important to look at the deal against your exact requirements and the more ticks in boxes the better!)

Technical Specifications

Ask the hosting company about their facility to ensure they are using commercially-graded servers. Do they have a fault-tolerant data centre and are they employing redundant configurations for network and power components? Do they have redundant Internet feed available?

Hosting Plans

When choosing a web hosting plan, essentials you’ll need to check on include disk space, FTP access, databases, SSL services, regular backups, access to server configuration files, raw logs/statistics, the number of email boxes and the number of domains supported.

If you plan on using WordPress for your blog, for example, check that the hosting company can provide a one-click installation service.

And then, of course, there’s the price!

WordPress.org recommend a handful of hosting companies at wordpress.org/hosting. These companies all offer one-click installation of WordPress for around US$7 per month. There are also recommendations at websitehostingreviews.net/wordpress-hosting.html, that are also around the same cost.

I’ve decided to support an Australian company in the end. Jumba seem to provide everything I’m looking for (including Fantastico WordPress installation, up to four domain names, great control panel and payment by Bpay) and it’s around AUD$9 per month. They even won the ‘Best Web Hosting – Business’ category in the 2007 APC Internet Technology Awards. Good enough for me!

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