The Hosting Decision

How to Effectively Choose Your Website's Host

  I know for me, just starting out in internet marketing, hosting was the ONE thing I understood less than anything else. I've been in sales all my life, marketing was just an extension of that... but hosting? errrrrr.

Here's a visual, (those always help me...) You are a doctor. I know, it might just crack you up... but close your eyes and imagine this scenario... 

Imagine that hosting is the 'front office' of your business. The office staff if you will. You've got four positions involved.

Wouldn't it be nice to have that much staff? You know what? You DO.

Since you've hired the new staff, you feel pretty confident that you are ready to open for business and things will be great. We've all been to a doctor's office, we know the routine. (Remember, just go with me, a rosy imagined scenario) Now, imagine that you HAVE no billing department (how will you bill your clients, send the monthly newsletter, capture readers' email addresses, send auto responses, send mail to your list? SO you see, you must have access to a cgi-bin or the ability to run PHP scripts.

What about our insurance person, the one that 'collects' all your money? This particular employee keeps detailed records of all your clients information filed neatly away and can recall them for you at a moment's notice. Articles, profile information, passwords, recent buying history, email addresses, and archives, or pieces of a certain area, say insurance, to go with something else, like companies of the same sort. Your insurance employee is the most organized part of your staff, and will most likely handle the most information you would NEVER want to lose. SO then, how could you do business without MySQL or Postgre SQL databases?

Don't worry about HOW all your employees do their job, just know that you NEED them for now, alright?

And then there's your Office Manager. That would be your hosting control panel Cpanel or Plesk, or 'Hosting Options' board or something along that line. That's where you go to see all that's going on in your office.. I mean, YOU're the doctor! YOU don't make sure the billing person is doing their job, you just touch base with the Office Manager.

Now then, with all that in mind, realize that EVERY host has some sort of 'office manager' some are just more effective than others. And back to the others... you NEED them, the office manager can't do all that work... they supervise it.

Imagine now that you decide you want to move across town.

You have to get ALL those files out of the cabinets, put them in boxes, take them to the new office and put them in new cabinets in different places... do you remember which ones go with what? Can you tell the insurance files from the patient files? Oh, by the way, your office manager quit, you now have a new one....

That's a simplified way to put it all (and maybe a little confusing!) but even though you're a 'new doctor ' and all you want to do is doctor, you'll go out of business without a good office staff... so plan it right from the beginning and you won't have to go through that move!! When you plan right from the start, you'll have a wonderful office you can work in for years to come!

IF you are going to do business online and want room to grow your business with the least amount of pain, my personal suggestion is HostGator or if you'd like an eco-friendly host, Go Green Hosting . Pay for it with Adsense every month!

Sign me, been burned and learned!

Warmest Regards,