Your Web Hosting Solution not Up to Par? Dissatisfied?
Problems, problems and MORE problems. Does this sound familiar to you? Are you at your wits end? Pulling out your hair? For some, this is your first time experiencing the pitfalls of a web hosting solution and for others, it’s just another set back in the long road to finding a new web host.
Everyone remembers their first horrible experience with a web host. It was one of those that said they had excellent service and top of the line this and that, but in the end, your site didn’t work, your files disappeared, emails didn’t work or it was just plain slower than a turtle (nothing wrong with turtles, but your website should travel a little faster than one). You’ll find yourself at a crossing, a bridge if you will. There, you will need to make a decision to go back and stick it out or cross it and leave to start fresh again.
Are you a web hosting solution hopper?
Do you find yourself jumping from one web hosting solution to another? Maybe you haven’t realized it because you’ve already had web hosting for several years, but now that you think of it, you might have a problem. Moving hosts is not the greatest feeling in the world. You end up having to reset everything back to how it was before, uploading, reconfiguring, pointing DNS and so on. What a mess.
How could you stop or prevent this?
There will be no magical web hosting solution company to refer everyone to that will make all your problems go away. There are however, measures that you can proceed with to make your life easier and be able to pick up the pieces much quicker in any future unfortunate event that WILL happen. WILL happen meaning that this is technology and no matter how much you spend or how closely you take care of your website, it will malfunction in some capacity, at one point or another. The idea is to keep this at a minimum and be able to fix the situation when it occurs.
Does any of this article sound familiar? Do you feel yourself in a state of flux where you are not sure where to go, but anywhere is better than the web hosting solution you are with now. A few small rules of web hosting that applies to everyone will make most of these problems seem insignificant, if followed correctly:
- Always have your domain separate from your webhost. Register your domain with an independent registrar
- Purchase 2 separate web hosting solution accounts
- ALWAYS backup your data and NEVER rely on the hosting company to do this
- Have your own external email address not associated with your domain OR a free account
Stated in the first point, it’s a good idea that you should maintain your domain through the registrar itself. Many registrars have their own hosting as well, but as the saying goes, don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. Some examples of domain registrars that you can use are Register.com, Netsol.com, Godaddy.com or Melbourneit.com and from their website, you can open up your domain account for free and place one or all your domains there from one manageable interface.
The next step is to find a web hosting solution provider to physically host your website. You will be able to associate your needs by finding and reading reviews about each company that you see. Review sites are all over the place and one that appeals to you and offers all that you need would be your likely choice. Once you make the purchase, the hosting company will provide you with domain name servers (example ns1.somethinghostingdns.com and ns2.somethinghostingdns.com). You then log into you DOMAIN control panel with your domain registrar company (register.com et al) and make these changes when you are ready to launch your site. Give it about 24 hrs for full propagation (time to bring it to 100% functionality).
After you find a web hosting solution for your website, now begin looking for email hosting and ultimately what you want is control over your domain and your website because your “site” should be separate from your mail so if one goes down, the other is still going strong and you have time to move and change providers if necessary without being totally down. Again, after you choose a proper email hosting company, you need to change the MX records to point mail. Similar to air traffic control, your domain acts as an internet traffic control center directing where things should go. There are no special things you should know because it remains the same as if you hosted everything in one place, but instead, you have multiple points of failure and not one.
Just when you think nothing can go wrong, it does and no matter how much you trust the company you are with, you need to keep an additional backup on your PC or on a separate external account that is not directly related to the companies servicing your website. This means hosting, mail and domain name. This sounds paranoid, but you’ll be happy when the day comes and you breath a sigh of relief as you realize it could have been a whole lot worse. Lastly, if something should happen to your email address, it is always good to have an external email to correspond with, preferably not from a free account like hotmail, yahoo, gmail, but an emergency one from your home DSL or cable provider can do the job. Following this method prevents a big problem from happening and limits it to a small insignificant bump in the road.
