Which Web Hosting Service Should I Use?

A web hosting service can range from free to hundreds of dollars per month if you use a dedicated server.

But, for the business WordPress blog user who has one or two blogs or websites, you can certainly save yourself a lot of heartache by choosing the right web hosting service before you set up your blog or website.  Here are some definite considerations:

• Avoid free web hosts!  You never know when they might go bust and, they usually have limited customer support. 
• Stick with Linux or Unix since Windows based servers can conflicts with aspects of the WordPress software
• Use a host that uses a control panel.  You may not think it necessary now, but if you use sites like GoDaddy to host your site, you may decide to add scripts that need the cron job updating, only find there is none!
• Do your homework.  Find out what the company's customer service is like, do they have live support and try to establish their customer service response rate.
• What is the speed and reliability of the servers and hardware.  You want to ensure they have a high-speed connection  (preferably T3 or higher) to the Internet.
• How effective is their bandwidth?  Will they shut your site down the minute you exceed your bandwidth.  Opt for unlimited bandwidth for your site if you know you're going to be getting a lot of traffic.
• Backup Systems – good hosts will have back up systems in place to guard against power failures,
  which will cause you to lose data and customers.
• Big storage space - I would suggest a minimum of 1 gig if you're a regular blogger.  If you're going to be adding audio and video to your blog then consider hosting these elsewhere like Libsyn.com, or just another host that gives you large disk space, such as Lunapages.  It will be cheaper for you and will prevent your website becoming too sluggish as it tries to find these hefty files.

There are other considerations such as Pop 3 email accounts, free Perl and CGI scripts, but the truth is, if the host as the above, it's more likely to include the other ancillary items.

So, which hosts do I recommend for your WordPress blogging needs?  I personally recommend either using Hostgator (my first choice because of ease of use and excellent customer service) or Lunarpages, who give you huge storage space and unlimited bandwidth for some of their accounts.

Hope this helps you reduce your frustrations when trying to find a decent web hosting service provider.

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