Step 2: Finding a Server For Your Website.

[FTW]

Finding a Server For Your Website.

The next step in building your own website is to find a server. The first thing I would suggest if you are wanting a professional looking site is to avoid ALL of the FREE hosting offers. There are a number of reasons I suggest this, but most of the important reasons involve having someone else post advertising on your website that might conflict with the message you are trying to send to your readers. Another reason to avoid “some of them” is because if you decide to move your site to a new server at some time in the future, you may find out that you can NOT download the content of your website, in order to move it somewhere else.

Even when paying for a web hosting service, you have to be careful who you go with. Basically anyone can “rent” a server and then offer hosting packages to unsuspecting individuals that don’t know who they are actually paying.

I have owned websites in the past that were on a “shared” server, meaning multiple people had websites on the same machine and the “box” or server was actually owned by someone in a foreign country that hacked my site.

There have been other cases where someone rented a server from an American server farm, then sub-rented space on the server to individual website owners. This happens frequently and it is not always a bad situation, but in one particular case the person I was renting space from worked out of his home PART TIME. He did not have an office or staff to answer “support” questions or deal with problems when the server was down, as in not working and no one cold access my website for DAYS.

So, when choosing a reliable company to “host” your website, I recommend finding a company that has a “good reputation” for timely support responses, because you WILL need an expert to help you. I would also find a company that has multiple hosting “servers” across the globe, so that you will know they are big enough to have full time support. The other features to look for are “daily backups” of your website, the number of email accounts IF you are planning on a server to host a “group” or club, and either the cPanel or Plesk program software. I will explain more about these services in a future post.

Other things to look at is the speed of the server, number of “files” you can host, bandwidth allocated and how much hard drive space. Don’t get fooled by the term unlimited. Nothing is unlimited in real life, not even life it’s self.

My personal recommendation is https://www.fastcomet.com I have used them for years. Their tech support uses English and they have servers in America as well as other countries. They do have 24/7 tech support and they are super fast when ever you need their help.

They have “shared servers” for reasonable pricing, although they did raise their pricing a couple of years ago, so it is quite a bit higher then it used to be, however I still have multiple accounts with them and am quite happy.

If you go for their service, be it a shared server, a cloud server or a dedicated server, they ALWAYS have an introductory offer, so take advantage of the discount price. I always sign up for three years at a time, in order to save money.

You MUST have a domain name before you get your hosting. While Fast Comet as well as almost all the hosting companies will offer you a FREE domain name, read my post on “Getting your own Domain Name” before you ever accept a FREE domain name from any company.

Once you have your domain name and server, move on to my next post on how to set your “Name Servers”.