Be very careful selecting a web developer who offers a full service where they register your domain, provide hosting, design your site, and do the SEO on it.
I’ve come across too many people who end up with problems especially regarding their domain name because they have a dispute with the developer over something and don’t realise that their website address doesn’t actually belong to them.
My advice is to always register your website URL first, then get a developer to design and host your site. At least this way if you do have a dispute you can redirect your domain to a new host account and you won’t lose your online address.
This is especially important if the domain name is your own name or your business name, or you make most of your income from it, in fact if you can’t afford to lose your domain for any reason then I strongly suggest you follow this advice.
Imagine the cost of litigation to reclaim your URL, or worse, the cost of building a new brand while someone else benefits from your previous efforts. It’s just not worth it so make sure you have an account with a separate registrar.
I know from my own experience, getting a reliable webhost who allows you to have multiple domains on a single account without overselling server capacity is an absolute necessity.
I tend to avoid plans that offer me unlimited everything, but I also avoid plans that are too cheap. Usually I prefer a plan that suits my needs completely, you know, exactly the number of domains, mysql databases, disk space etc.
This has a downside, I often don’t know where to find a plan that is perfect, and this is why webhost review sites that break things down in a table with relevant columns are so useful.
If you decide to check out a review site make sure they’ve been around for a while, and they let users leave a good or bad review of the host. Then check out the webhosts that come tops in your search and send them an email or login to their live chat system and see how you feel about them when they contact you.
Also check and see if they have a forum and then see if pre-sales enquiries are answered, and watch the announcement section to see how often they let you know about a problem, but read what their customers say when they do that.
Webhosting these days seems more and more confusing every time you look at your options, prices don’t seem to be the same, some are going up, others are throwing in even more website storage, unlimited bandwidth or domains, and if you want to know about any of it you need a great site that does the comparisons for you.
Rating the various webhosting deals is probably the best way of finding your next host, at least this way you can see what other customers have said about them and what their experiences were.
In the past I’ve had a reseller account that lets me become a webhost for a low monthly fee, and it’s a great way to start your own webhosting business without having to invest in equipment, arrange broadband connections, employ staff etc.
The only thing you need to do is make sure you become a reseller of a reputable host who won’t let you down and more importantly, won’t let your customers down.
Hosting | Pixabella | 
January 7, 2009 6:40 am | 
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