ARTICLES FOR WEBMASTERS 
 Web Hosting for Profitable Websites
Choosing a good host is one of the most important decisions you will
make about your online business. A poor host provides constant
distractions, downtime, or content loss. With a good host, your website
is available 99.9% of the time, loads rapidly, and has sufficient space
and bandwidth.
Perhaps the most critical component of a good web hosting company is
their support. Test a prospective host, send them an e-mail
question, or even call. If you do not get a response in under 12
hours for e-mail, or cannot get through to a support person on the
phone, look elsewhere. You will have technical support issues
sooner or later, and every minute you wait for help is a minute you are
losing money.
Space and bandwidth are important in your web host decision
process. If you are doing a small e-commerce site, space is a
minor issue unless you are hosting a large amount of video or pictures.
A 10gp plan is a huge amount of hosting for a single website. New
websites with little traffic also require little bandwidth.
However, to make money, you will need some traffic, so make sure there
is room to grow. Also, decide if you are hosting one domain or
many. Hosting solutions often offer packages to support a single
domain, or a single domain with add on domains. If you are likely
to host additional websites, look for a plan that allows add on domains.
You need to consider what additional hosting requirements you
need. If you are running an e-commerce store, you will need PHP
and MySQL as part of your hosting package. Anything beyond a
simple html pages require those tools, such as Wordpress or
Joomla. If you are interested in great web tools such as
Wordpress, but lack any Unix experience, look for a program called
Fantastico as part of the package. Fantastico makes installation
of CMS systems simple.
Finally consider price. Basic shared hosting is inexpensive. At
this point, you likely have no need of dedicated or shared servers, so
stick with the inexpensive plans that meet your above
requirements. Powerful plans such as the Host Gator business
package are selling for $12.95 or less, and will meet your hosting
requirements for some time to come.
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