Features To Look Out For Before Purchase of Web Hosting Package
Website hosting popular referred to as Web Hosting is a very popular service on the internet because without hosting the website, the website documents cannot be found on the internet.
In my years of blogging, i have passed through different kinds of challenges or should I call it frustrations with several web hosting services. Before I start talking about web hosting, you need to get a name where your hosted web documents will point to which is called a domain name. Take a domain name like your unique SIM card number which is a unique phone number.
Domain Names
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Domain names comes with many extensions like .com for company, .org for organization, .biz for business, .net for network domain names etc and they are collectively called top level domains (TLD). Recently there have been lot’s of unique domain names like .lawyer, .club, .school, .blog, .blog etc. There is also unique domain name extension for each country like .com.ng for a Nigerian company, .org.ng for a Nigerian organization and .NG which is the most expensive Nigeria domain extension.
WHAT IS A WEB HOSTING
Web hosting is the uploading on web documents, media, videos and all other information to an allocated storage space on the internet so as to enable your website or web pages to be viewed online. Website information is stored on super computers called Servers. The web servers is a special computer that must be on as far all the websites hosted on it should be on every time.
There are two major categories of website hosting services which are: Linux and Windows hosting. Linux hosting is the most popular website hosting and is far more affordable and easy to use that it windows counterpart.
Linux web hosting has different types like;
Shared hosting – the most popular type of Linux web hosting which involves sharing of web servers by many websites. This kind of hosting is recommended for websites with less amount of traffic though the are different categories of shared hosting.
E-Commerce hosting – made to suit reliable and secured ecommerce websites and portals.
WordPress Hosting – this kind of hosting service only allows the installation of hosting of websites on the platform of a content management system (CMS) called WordPress which is the most popular CMS.
Dedicated Server – In this kind of hosting, a dedicated and unique server is assign to one hosting account. This type of hosting is mostly acquired by website with large traffic.
Now, let me talk about the components of web hosting service you must always look out for before you purchase a web hosting package and here I will assume you are purchasing a shared hosting package.
Add-ons Domain Space
An add-on domain is an additional domain name that is hosted on your web hosting server but registered by another domain registrar or hosting company. For instance you can buy a domain name from say “Web Hosting Firm 1” and host the website at “Web Hosting Firm 2”. This is achieved by point your DNS – (Domain Name Server) of the hosting company that will host the site to the domain name in your client’s dashboard.
A good shared hosting account should have at least one add-ons domain space for the minimum place so you can save cost of buying another hosting in case you need a run two websites.
Sub Domains Space
A subdomain is a domain name that is an extension of your main domain name. For instance if you have jambadmission.com.ng as your domain then a sub domain can be blog.jambadmission.com.ng.
A good shared hosting plan should have at least 5 sub domains slots for the minimum hosting plan.
Custom Email Address
A custom email address makes you look professional. For example [email protected] or [email protected]. A good web hosting package should have unlimited custom email addresses slot no matter the level of the hosting package.
BANDWIDTH
In web hosting, bandwidth is the amount of data transferred between a website and the website’s users within a specified period. Bandwidth limit is usually measured monthly and in simple terms is defines the amount of visitors your website or web pages can accommodate in a month. The amount is in Gigabytes. If your website hosting plan allocate 30 gigabytes monthly bandwidth and you end up consuming the 30 GB at the middle of the month, you website will go down and re-opens first day of the successive month or you can contact your host to purchase additional bandwidth space.
There are no direct way to calculate the bandwidth of a particular website which means that you can’t ascertain the exact number of visitors your site can accommodate in a month because of the varying size of web pages.
Every web hosting account has a tool used to check the bandwidth of each website hosted in an hosting account like AWStats and Webilizer which is found in all Cpanel.
Softaculous
Softaculous is one of the greatest feature you should look for in a hosting plan and it’s found in every Cpanel hosting. Softaculous is the software that makes website building smooth and simple. Through Softaculous, you can install content management systems like WordPress and Joomla, E-commerce shopping carts like Open Cart, Zen Cart, Classified Advert scripts like OSClass, Social media scripts like BuddyPress and lots more.
Other important features you should look out for in a web hosting plan are:
- Unlimited MySQL – for unlimited database
- PHP– Must have the latest PHP version And website Back up.
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