A Guide to Choosing a Host For Your Website

Hosting falls into that category of things most people find intimidating. However, if your website is anything more to you than a hobby or a lark, this is something you should learn about. A poor choice of host will, at best, leave you with a site that runs slowly. At worst you will lose your website and your domain name entirely.

Don’t Trust This to Someone Else

If you’re hiring someone to build you a website, chances are they’ll offer to manage hosting for you. They do this because it’s an easy thing to set up, they mark up the cost a little and they earn a healthy profit. However, remember this: Your website is a commodity. It is important and it is valuable.  Would you buy a brand new car and keep it in a garage you didn’t have the key to?



There are plenty of good hosts out there, with good support and an easy sign-up process. Feel free to collect recommendations, but purchase your hosting package yourself. Use your credit card, put yourself in as the primary contact and make sure you keep track of your own account information. Businesses go under, freelancers move on. If you leave these details in someone else’s hands, you might one day discover your website is no longer yours.

But don’t worry! Like tic-tac-toe, web hosting may seem complex and full of variation at a glance, but once you understand the basics you’ll realize you will never lose if you follow a few simple rules.

So first let’s learn a little about what exactly you are buying when you purchase a hosting package.

Understanding Servers

“Server” (when applied to computers) is another word that tends to send people screaming for the hills. So you may be surprised to learn a server is in some ways far simpler than your laptop. In reality, a server is nothing more than a computer that has no screen, no keyboard and is turned on and hooked up to the internet at all times. When you buy a hosting package you are purchasing a certain amount of space on someone’s server and they give you access so you can store your files there. It’s that simple.

The Domain Name

Of course, space on a server somewhere isn’t going to do you any good if people can’t see what you put there. This is where the domain name comes in. A domain name is like a street address. If I go to 123 S. Main Street I can easily walk into the house that is built there. If I type brownwingstudio.com into a browser, that browser consults the massive list of domain names that exist and figures out where, in all the internet, my little piece of server space resides. Then it simply pulls up the files it finds for me to look at.

Hosting Resellers

It is not practical for most people to have a computer in their house that is on all the time and configured so the right people (people who are building websites) can get into it and add and remove files but the wrong people (hackers) can’t. This is where hosting resellers come in. There are warehouses all over the world full of nothing but servers. These servers are where the internet physically exists, and these machines are huge. One server can host hundreds of websites. And it’s a win/win for everyone. I don’t have to deal with the headache of managing my own server, and resellers make money off the space they rent.

But like everything, there are quality levels when it comes to hosting. Some hosts put too many sites on each server and then there isn’t enough connection speed for all the files to be accessed at the same time. This means when you try to look at a site on this server you’re competing with people trying to look at hundreds of other websites at the same time. You have to sit there and wait for images to load. Other hosts aren’t vigilant about security, and sites on their servers get hacked all the time.

How to Tell Who’s Good

I purchased my first hosting package in the fall of 2002. I was studying abroad in England. I had been tinkering with HTML and CSS for a while and I urgently needed a way to share pictures and stories about my time away with friends at home. This was the era before the rise of the blog (Facebook didn't even exist), so when it came to doing this thing that is so simple now, I was on my own. I was utterly broke and the thought of dropping any money at all on a website seemed frivolous. So I found the cheapest host out there and bought vitzy.com plus a year of hosting for $34.

It wasn’t long before I realized why the hosting was cheap. My site was down a lot. Sometimes my homepage would be replaced by a different one that said, “You’ve been hacked!” and would include the darkened silhouettes and hacker handles of two kids in New Zealand who apparently had nothing better to do. Then the company I’d been hosting with disappeared entirely and for a few tricky months it looked like I was going to lose vitzy.com.

I learned my lesson, and since then I follow a few key rules when it comes to hosts:

Size Matters

• Bigger Is Better: Since I’ve taken on clients, I’ve sorted out almost every conceivable manner of hosting debacle, and while it pains me to say it (I'm a 'support local business' kind of person) lots of them arise from local hosts. All it takes is some guy who’s convinced configuring servers is no big deal. He signs up to resell domain names from the reseller of a reseller, he buys a few servers and puts them in the basement. He builds a website and starts calling himself a host. And for everyone who buys from him, headaches abound. His servers are slow, they’re not set up properly, they go down during power outages, he never backs them up and he has no security. All his clients get mad at him. He stops answering his phone. Getting your domain name away from him so you can go somewhere else is simply never going to happen.
• Not Too Big Though: Then there is the other side of the coin. There are whole warehouses in India and other countries that sell hosting space to hosts. Now you have people selling space on servers they’ve never seen and don’t know anything about. As you can imagine, there is no accountability when a hiccup happens.
• In Between Is Just Right: So you want something in the middle. A national level host with lots of reviews is the best option. If they will give you the physical address where their servers reside and it’s not in a strip mall or a residential area, that’s a really good sign.

Reputation Matters

• Learn From Others: Reviews are key when it comes to choosing a host. Have other people had good experiences? Is there someone there to help you if you need support? Do they care if your site goes down? These are all important to know.
• Name Recognition Isn’t Everything: I can’t tell you how many people are on GoDaddy simply because they had seen an ad for GoDaddy at some point. This is the worst imaginable reason to buy something. Everyone’s heard of McDonalds, but that doesn’t mean you have an important business lunch there or treat the new potential love of your life to a meal of Chicken McNuggets.

Don't Rest On Your Laurels

So you've done the research and found a great host, and your site is up and running like a dream. Good job! But don't forget about it. Check your website regularly. Keep an eye on how things are running. All hosts are subject to the laws of chaos (crashes, connection hiccups etc.) that govern computing, but these problems should be at a minimum. Don't turn into that person who pesters your host every time a page loads slowly, but do keep track of problems. Even a good business can go bad. If your site's performance starts to suffer, do something. First double check other people are having the same problem, then contact your host and ask what gives. If they say it is your computer or try to sell you an upgrade, say you want a better answer or you'll take your business elsewhere. Moving your website is a pain, but it's a whole lot easier than losing it.

Who Do We Recommend?

Our website is hosted on Bluehost. As it so happens, we are part of their affiliate program, which means we get a little kickback for referring people their way. However, we loved and recommended them long before we were affiliated with them and we ourselves host more than a dozen sites on their servers. We’ve never had a problem.

We’re also affiliated with HostGator, which is an excellent option for people who need a less comprehensive hosting package than Bluehost offers. And if you use the coupon code “brownwingstudio” when you sign up for a HostGator account you’ll get $9.95 off your hosting package, and we’ll get a commission.

If you are considering a different host, we'd be happy to offer our opinion. We have worked on a lot of sites that run on a lot of different servers and we know which hosts are reliable and which aren't. A word to the wise: Our two least favorite hosting providers by a wide margin are GoDaddy and Yahoo.

If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers

**I don’t know who wrote this. I’ve seen it in several different places around the internet. However, I often find comparing web design to construction is useful for both me and my clients, so I thought I’d repost.**

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that the kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as interesting a project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.