Features - the Features a Good Web Host Provides

A Web Hosting Article Contributed by Frances Rhea

What a Good Web Hosting Company Offers

The four most important factors for judging the quality of web hosts are: 1) Support, 2) Cost, 3) Reliability, and 4) Features. In this article we will discuss the features you can expect with a good web hosting service.

Basic Web Hosting Features

You should look for a server with at least 20MB of disk space whether you choose a free host or a paid host. Paid hosting offers 50+MB to host your music, photo albums, or online store. You should expect at least 1.5GB of bandwidth traffic or data transfer per month. With paid hosting you should receive at least 5 GB per month.

Paid web host services should include registering your domain name (www.yourdomain.com) for free or for a very small yearly fee. Subdomains (subdomain.yourdomain.com) should also be included which are great for having special sections on your site. Domain Pointers or parking is another valuable service in case you have multiple domain names. That way all domains will go to the same web site pages.

POP3 Email accounts (you@yourdomain.com) are another necessity for any good business. Autoresponders to respond to your web site messages is another valuable tool. A good hosting company will offer unlimited email addresses along with SMTP/POP Servers to send and receive mail. Email forwarding and FTP Accounts along with password protected directories are also musts.

If you are unfamiliar with FTP uploading, a web-based control panel can make managing your site easy. Pre-Installed CGI scripts such as a guestbook, form processor, link manager, banner manager, discussion forums, and counter make creating a professional site much easier. A pre-installed shopping cart is also a necessity if you plan on an ecommerce site. Being able to install your own CGI scripts should also be included at no charge.

Database Support such as mySQL are needed if you plan on providing ecommerce, auctions, polling, and other data driven scripts. Ecommerce also requires a 128 Bit SSL Secure Server.

There should be no setup fee and yearly domain name registration or renewal should also be included free with paid hosting.

All servers include some version of PERL, PHP, and Server Side Includes along with instant setup.

The web host should have daily or hourly tape backups, have 24x7 network monitoring, at least 99% guaranteed uptime, and provide a program that has detailed web statistics.

Advanced Web Host Features

Optional services for web hosting will incur additional small fees for such things as extra disk space and extra bandwidth traffic. These may become necessary as your site expands and becomes more popular.

A website submission service for the major search engines should be provided either as a free or paid service along with tools to help you improve your keywords and increase traffic to your web site and reach a large number of targeted customers.

Web design services and a video streaming service should be offered at a small additional cost.