Typical Web Host Sitemap
The first graphic is the sitemap of a typical web host.
I blacked out the name for obvious reasons,
but if you visit most web hosts,
you'll find something very similar.
Where's the FOCUS?
Yahoo Small Business Sitemap
The next graphic is the top portion of the Yahoo Small Business sitemap.
Note the name.
It's Yahoo Small Business, not Yahoo Web Hosting.
Where's the focus?
Is it on business or web hosting?
The deeper you dig,
the more you will realize that Yahoo is focused,
not on selling you web hosting,
but on the success of your business.
You Do the Research
Don't take my word for it!!
I urge you to do the research.
Visit several different web hosts and look for their sitemaps. Dig deep.
Then visit Yahoo Small Business.
Where's the FOCUS!!
Support
When it comes to web hosting, the majority of complaints you'll read will be about their support.
Some web hosts answer their trouble tickets in 15 minutes or less. Some answer in about an hour. Some won't answer for about 24 hours. Others don't answer them at all.
If you find 100 complaints about a web host's support on one of the web hosting review sites, it might be a good idea to stay clear. 2 or 3 complaints is probably not much to worry about.
Before you buy web hosting, check to see if the host has 24/7 support of any kind. If you're going to be working your website on weekends or evenings , don't buy hosting from a company that only offers 8/5 or even 12/5 support.
If you want to check the average ticket response time of some of the web hosts, visit www.realmetrics.com and look at the Shared Hosting stats.
A web host might be slow to answer tickets because of the vast number of customers they service, but also offer a 24 hour tech line and chat service.
You should also check to see if they have tutorials for the software you'll be using to build your website. You should be able to find these using their Sitemap.
Terabytes
A terabyte(trillion) is the next level of measurement afer a gigabyte(billion). Before that it was megabytes(million).
In the web hosting world the terabyte is the latest MARKETING PLOY. There is no way in the world a web host can provide these numbers on a shared server.
It's like saying UNLIMITED bandwidth. There is no such thing!!
If you ever started to approach even 2 terabytes of bandwidth, a fraction of what some of these web hosts claim to offer, your site would be shut down in an instant. You would be asked to purchase a dedicated server.
Could you imagine being on a shared hosting server where 100 customers were using 15 terabytes of bandwidth. ( Actually it's impossible!) Before it crashed your website would be running like a frozen slug.
So what's a good bandwidth number to look for?
Our website has over 800 web pages. We average about 3000 visitors a day. We use about 300 megabytes of bandwidth a day. In an average month we use about 9000 megabytes of bandwidth. 9000MB equals 9GB.
Unless you are going to run a TV ad on CBS and give away free iPods from your website, you're never going to need 1 terabyte of bandwidth, much less 15.
Summary
If this is your first website, find a site building tool that you are comfortable with. Then look at the support options offered by the host. If they offer 50GB of bandwidth a month - You're Covered!!
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