What about web hosting Joomla 1.5? This is part one and covers overall hosting issues. Part two will cover Joomla specific issues. This post falls into the category of; not all web hosts are created equal, or you get what you pay for, or you learn from your mistakes. This blog post is giving you exact details about what to look for and consider. And this post is talking about shared server hosting, which is the most prevalent type of hosting offered today. In the future, we will break down other types of hosting.
Before you decide what hosting company to signup with, or to move your existing site to, consider the following questions:
What is Your Joomla 1.5 Website For?
Do you own or are you building a new website? What is it for? Are you just learning Joomla, or it is a hobby or personal website? If you are building a website for fun or it is not essential to a business or organization, then you decision on who to host with becomes much easier. Go with least expensive solution and learn the ropes! If your website is an important tool in your business or organization, you must make your decision very carefully. It could literally mean thousands of dollars to your organization.
What is Your Budget?
For most people, this is a non-issue. Hosting is so commoditized that prices range from free to $10 per month to basic hosting plans. That is only a difference of $120 per year. And the difference in quality of service, security and performance can be astounding. Everyone would like to save money, but as my cousin used to say, don’t step over a dollar to save a nickel. Later in this post we will tell you what to look for.
What is the Hosting Company's Business Model?
When searching for a good website hosting company for hosting your Joomla 1.5 website, consider their business model. How do you find that out? Call them on the phone. Read online reviews. Scour their website. You will get the idea.
What About Web Hosting Review Websites?
Many people go to web hosting review websites to try and find good hosting. A good place to start, but it is just a part of your overall search for a partner. The problem is that some of these are advertising based websites only. So the advertisers that spend the most money get great reviews! It is that simple. And while there is nothing wrong with these websites in general (as revenue generators), they are not objective and are clearly pure marketing. There are good website hosting forums and review websites, but many times the posts are from people who have an axe to grind or feel that they have been wronged so they vent out as a comment or forum post. That is also fine, but you must read between the lines. Perhaps they repeated violated the web hosting companies terms of service.
What Not To Look For
What are some things to look for? Here are some of the pitches that you will hear from the Super Cheap, best hosting ever crowd:
- Super Cheap Hosting!
- You Get All This for Nothing, But Wait, We Will Double The Offer!
- Blazing Fast!
- Unlimited Domains, Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Support, Unlimited Schlimited….
- 99.99999999999999% Uptime!
- We Do Daily Backups!
Think about the business model above. These hosts must sell an enormous amount of accounts to make a profit. They tend to oversell, overstuff each server to make that profit. And here is a dirty little secret, the more they support you, the more money they lose. And while they may backup your site every day, try having them find your backup from yesterday, or the day before etc. It could get interesting. And security? Well, it can be the wild, wild, west. Anything goes. And remember, if one account out of hundreds or thousands on the same server as you gets their email blacklisted, then that will directly affect you!
What To Look For
Here are some of the value that you will find from business class or premium hosting providers:
- Business Class Hosting
- True 99.9% Uptime with Published Real Time Results
- Reliable, Knowledgable Support
- Real Time Server Status
- High Performance - Speed
- Load Balancing – Different Servers for Web, Mail, mySQL, Control Panel, etc.
- Clustered Hosting – Accounts are Added Round Robin to Different Servers for Load Balancing
- They Undersell Servers – Less Accounts Per Server Than Expected
- Tight Security and Terms of Use Policies
- User Accessible Backups
- Global Directory Permissions and Ownership Tools
These features are from web hosting company with a business model designed around performance, support and quality. It is a more transparent, value added model. These hosting providers are aimed at a more serious clientele that relies on the hosting as an important part of their business approach. And it is not expensive! You just need to know what to look for.
So think about this. Lets say that you spend $3.95 per month for hosting with elcheapohosting.com. So the annual cost is $48 per year. Your website availability is sporadic. Up and down. The website is slow at times. Your email domain is blacklisted because of some other account on the same oversold email server as you. And you get hacked, but the hosting company is slow to respond and they can’t find a recent backup, but one from two weeks ago. This has all happened to me. And it is unacceptable at any price.
Or you pay $10 per month from rocksolidhosting.com. The annual cost is $120 per year or $72 more than elcheapohosting. The website is truly up 99.9% of the time. What does one hour of downtime cost? It is always fast. Security and terms of use policies are strict and ENFORCED. And if you get hacked, you get access to your own backups with the control panel. Two snapshots per day for the last 30 days. You choose and restore your website yourself. Is all of this worth $6 per month? Of course it is worth much more than that. Much more.
s-gohost.net provides business class hosting, specializing in Joomla and Wordpress Linux and Windows hosting. Plans with all of the “business class features” listed above start at $4.95 per month. And we build and host Joomla websites as our core business model. Call us on the phone if you would like to learn more or you can sign-up online for one of our hosting plans. You will get direct support from us.
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