When it comes to having a website for newbie bloggers, web hosting is one of the first thing you will learn about. It’s extremely important to take an interest and care into web hosting. It’s an investment, and for some, creating a website can be hope to becoming a small business owner.
For the newbie blogger, you have a lot of options, both free and paid. It’s important to know the difference because some services can be really confusing.
Your ideal web host should be one that is stable, can handle your website’s needs, and also provide room for site growth. Some blogs will grow faster than others, so having a web host that can grow with you is important.
Here are some web hosting tips for newbie bloggers.
4 Web Hosting Tips for Newbie Bloggers
1. Knowing the difference between free hosts and self-hosting (paid hosting.)
There’s a lot of options for bloggers when it comes to hosting. There are many types of hosting, but for bloggers, most are faced with terms like “free host” and “paid host”, and even “self-hosting.”
Free host is what it says. It’s free to sign up and use. In some cases, there could be premium add-on services if you want your own domain, rather than the URL that the free host provides. While it is possible to make money on a free host, some have terms of service that state that you cannot have any advertising or selling on your website. An example of a free host for bloggers than allows some advertising, like banner ads, and Google Adsense is Google Blogger. A free host that doesn’t allow advertise is WordPress.com.
Paid Host or self-hosting aren’t too different. For the blogger, it means you have to purchase a domain from a domain registrar, buy web hosting, and then install a blog platform or content management system. You have more control over your blog and keep within the acceptable usage policy of your web host. A couple examples of a web hosts are GoDaddy, Bluehost, Namecheap, A2 hosting, and WP Engine. Self-hosted blogs allow more room for selling, like banner advertising, ecommerce, and more.
In many cases, newbie bloggers will start on a free host, and as their blog grows, they move to self-hosting so their web host can handle all the resources that the website uses. Some web hosts can be fairly affordable, and others, depending on what extra services they offer, can cost more.
2. Price
Price can be important deciding factor if you’re a newbie blogger. This all depends on what you’re willing to budget. Usually you would want to try investing in a domain and hosting for 1 year.
You may want to look more deeply into web hosts that offer really cheap plans, and compare to their competition. Watch out for too little or too much eye candy in packages, like unlimited bandwidth or unlimited diskspace, especially if the price is low. Make sure to look into things like acceptable data resource usage, and terms of service policies from the web host.
3. Support
Don’t just pick any old host. Pick who makes you comfortable to spend your money. Don’t be afraid to send questions into the Sales team and ask questions that you may end up encountering in the future, with the support team.
If their answer doesn’t satisfy you, don’t feel pressured to spend your money on web hosting until the web host can answer your questions without seeming like they’re hesitant.
4. Promotions
Promotions are really nice to take up, especially for the bloggers that are blogging on a dime, but again, like looking at the price point, be cautious. Sometimes promotions could be eye candy. That ‘sale’ sign in some cases reel people in blindly. Don’t get reeled in and make a rash investment. Do your homework.
5. Reputation
There are a lot of web hosts out there. When selecting one, you definitely need to look into what their reputation is with current and former clients. Be smart about what reviews you read, and throw out the ones that seem too good to be true.
Usually it’s a good thing before poking at the web host’s sales and support team to use those reviews to ask them questions, especially if some of those reviews may may leave you on the fence about buying.
For those who have been with web hosts for a while, what other tips do you have for newbies?
I'm on BlueHost which is alright, some people have had bad experiences with them but I'm sticking with them for now.
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I use HostGator as a dedicated server client. I have been a web host since 2005. And before that I tried a bunch of different hosts. I have even been scammed before by Surpassed Hosting.
It is important to do a search for your host and find out their reputation. There are forums dedicated to talking about web hosting and in the US, there is the Better Business Bureau – http://bbb.org/ . You can search there or through Google. On Google, just put your web hosts name and the word 'scam', and then hit the search button.
Bookmarked! A friend is making the switch to a hosted WordPress installation from a "free" blog soon, so this is a great resource for him. Re: reputation. There are credible sources that do web host reviews – use them. Best one I can think of is clickfire.com.
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I wouldn't put price at the top of the list for new bloggers who aren't tech-savvy. Budget hosting companies routinely provide very poor-quality and even insecure hosting for WordPress (or anything else, for that matter), and the new user is going to be least capable of providing her own blog security or dealing with other problems. There's certainly no need to pay $50/month, and a dedicated server would be positively dangerous in such a person's hands, but $10/month instead of $5 could be well-invested. In fact, what I'm recommending these days is Page.ly, because they handle upgrades and backups and make things easy, never oversell server space, and so far have a spotless security record. I'd say that's worth $14.99/month, and you're not committed to a year in advance, so if you don't like it, you can always leave.
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There are a few smaller webhosts like myself that provide smaller packages that are cheaper but provide great service. I actually do mine with my dedicated server through Host Gator and have been since 2006. My own is http://webhost-solutions.net/
I probably have better response time than most larger hosting companies…lol
There are a lot of crappy small hosts and I have witnessed it first hand… which is why I got in because I was tired of hearing it.
I think if you look deep, you will find a good one or two budget webhosting that do not eyecandy up their packages.
You are right guy, ‘buying hosting is the first step that will determine your blog/website popularity’. I believe it’s like a train engine. If the engine of the train is good then the rest of the boxes would be run properly. Selecting poor or check hosting just to save a few dollars could be dangerous for the blog/website. There are many issue with poor or cheap hosting like down server, lost of content, lack of security, poor customer support etc…
Hello,
Some newbie bloggers don’t know how to install WordPress scripts or technical stuffs related to these things. Therefore, choosing a web hosting company with a dedicated support team is very important.
Thank you for sharing the post.