**250 GB disk space, 2.5 TB transfer, and a free domain for life, all for only $6.95 a month at AN Hosting
So you’ve tried free web hosting services, had a blog on sites like blogger.com and basically had fun and treated it as a hobby, but all of that changed when you discovered that you actually love blogging and that there are people out there that are actually making money with their blogs, you figured out that you might as well get into the game as well but your main obstacle is that few (if any) advertisers are willing to do business with you if your not hosting your own blog with a proper domain name, hence your hosting experince begins…..
1.Assess your needs – This is one of the crucial parts of determining your Web Host, assess what you need, not everyone needs a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a Dedicated Server right off the bat.A majority of bloggers begin their web hosting journey with a Shared Hosting service.
2.Support and Scalability – When choosing a host for your blog it is a good idea to ensure that they provide good support and that their services are scalable.Test their support by sending emails and see how long it takes before they reply, do they give you an option at the end of the reply mail to answer further questions?, did they answer your questions well enough?.
A plus point for a hosting company is if they provide you with good support via 24 hour email, forum, live chat , etc.
By scalability i mean do they allow you to “grow”?, some hosting company only offer shared hosting services and this could be a pain if your blog starts to blossom and you discover that 5GB bandwidth a month is not going to be enough anymore,a good hosting company would normally also have a VPS and Dedicated Server plan so that moving your blog to a better server won’t be that much of a pain, trust me sometimes moving a blog from one hosting company to another can really be a nightmare is it doesn’t go well.
Web Hosting services like Spry.com and Hosting Zoom are a good choice to go with.
3.Do Your Research – Just because someone on a forum somewhere said a particular host provides good services doesn’t automatically means that the you should host your blog with them.
Search online, get reviews and feedback, search for all types of hosts, some of the best places to search are:
BlogFlux’s Web Hosting Directory
4.Beware the “unlimited” ploy – Stay away, in fact run as far as possible from hosting companies that promises you ‘unlimited’ space and ‘unlimited’ bandwidth.
There simply is no such thing as ‘unlimited’, everything has it’s limitations.This question has been going on and on for some time now and i can tell you honestly there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth, it’s just part of their marketing tactics.However you will also come across the term “unmetered” and there is a difference between unlimited & unmetered
Unlimited means there is virtually no limit, which is frankly impossible. Unmetered means that you will not be billed for any extra bandwidth being transferred but you still technically have a limit depending on the type of port connection you are on.
5.Control Panel – This is quite important too, choosing a good control panel is essential to your overall hosting experience especially if your a complete beginner and know almost nothing about web hosting.
I have had the luxury of using three main control panels before : Plesk, Direct Admin & Cpanel.
Out of the 3 listed above i can say that i have found that Cpanel is the control panel for me, mainly becuase of the cool feature that normally comes bundled with it – FANTASTICO.
Fantastico is a commercial script library which automates the installation of web applications to a website. Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel, which basically means that installing WordPress is as easy as pie.
6.Uptime – After figuring out all of the above and you start rolling out your blog the last thing you need is for it to crash every hour or so, keep track of your hosts uptime to ensure that your blog stays online (if possible) 100% of the time, most hosts will promise you 99% and that’s fair enough actually.
7.The $$ Factor – I saved this for last because often times most bloggers who are looking for a host will tend to check out the price of the hosting and miss out everything else.
“Ask not what your host can do for you, ask how much?”
Don’t ever follow that rule, it’s really not a good idea to get a hosting service based on price alone, always remember that you get what you paid for!.
Along the years i have seen many of my friends suffer alot because of this, i too had an experience with this issue way back in 2004 when i chose a dirt cheap host that eventually went missing which meant that i lost my site and whatever files i had stored in there, looking back at it now it was quite a funny experience but it won’t be funny if your running a succesfull blog only to see it dissappear overnight.
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** Just in case your wondering, this blog is hosted at HostingZoom, they have so far provided me with excellent support and uptime, hopefully that trend continues. 
**UPDATE: Below are some really good comments from people who have a experience in the hosting field either facing porblems or some tips that will help you out, so please consider the comments below as an extension of this article.
Thanks
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March 20th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
After two years dealing with a horrid limit on database access hits with my host server, which has been proven repeatedly to be totally below normal, I need to find another host. So this is good timing for me to find your article.
With the then-new limit on the database imposed after six months of service, my site is down as much as it is up. And they blame me, not themselves for the problem. It’s important to add database limits as well as bandwidth and storage space to the criteria of researching a good host.
I’m curious about Fantastico. It appears to hanlde installs well, but what about upgrades? Is it totally automatic, or do you have some control?
March 20th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Good point Lorelle,database limits are also an important element to consider.
Fantastico does handle install well and yes the upgrades are totally automatic, the Fantastico is geared more towards newbies, but if you have the chance and ability to than i would always say go for the manual installation and upgrade process.
*On a lighter note i must say that i’m honoured to have “Lorelle” comment on this blog that is barely 2 months old, i’ve always been a fan and admired your thoughts on WordPress.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Ah, shucks, and blush. Tain’t nothing.
I like what you are doing here and I look forward to more.
As I start the battle to find a new host, since my other can’t get it right after two years of torture on my main site, I will put Cpanel and Fantastico on the list of must-have features, thanks to you!
March 21st, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Sorry to hear that you had to go through it for two long years.
Anywayz from a personal experience i think if your looking for a host your should take a look at hostingzoom.com, they have a really good support team and i even had the experience of them transfering my site from an old host to their server..they did it well.
I think this review will sum it up:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=590901&highlight=hostingzoom
Hostgator.com is also another great host, afterall they are the host for the very popular http://www.hotscripts.com
All the best in your search for a host.
March 22nd, 2007 at 4:33 am
Just to comment on CPs, I have found DirectAdmin to be the superior Panel. Cpanel is not very use friendly. And DA has Installatron which installs Web Apps. I think the interface is also easier than Fantastico.
I used Cpanel for a while and I could not stand it. It was a bit confusing to use and the interface is terrible. Direct Admin is a breath of fresh air. It makes managing my hosting simple.
I just though I would offer another point of view, to an otherwise great article.
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:03 am
Hi Tony,
Thanks for your input, i did enjoy DA too when i was using it and yup it does have something similar to Fantastico, however i guess on personal point of view CPanel has been better for me.
**For readers..here’s a link to Direct Admin:
http://www.directadmin.com/features.html
March 25th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
A nice article, however, I personally consider another point more important; response times of the server. A lot of webhosts such as Dreamhost are fairly good to use, but the response time of the servers is often simply horrible due to the high workload of the severs – I suppose. There’s almost nothing as annoying as having to wait several seconds for your page to load, even downtime isn’t that bothersome if you ask me.
March 28th, 2007 at 3:19 am
For what it’s worth I was running Instigator Blog on Bluehost for quite some time but grew frustrated with the outages when a big surge of digg traffic would come in. Not that that happens terribly often…
On 3 quality recommendations I switched to A Small Orange – http://www.asmallorange.com.
So far so good, but too early to really recommend them officially. Bit pricier, they don’t offer “unlimited” anything, but to-date customer service has been exceptional.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
This is a very insightful post.
I agree that cPanel has to be the most popular control panel. And I admit I’ve gotten clients solely on the facts that I have cPanel and Fantastico, and clients can effortlessly install WordPress and other quality scripts.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I would like to add this infomation to my hosting site. What steps are needed to do so (if I may).
August 13th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Hi FavHost, please contact me about your idea.
http://wpthemesplugin.com/contact/
January 5th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I have used several hosting companies to host wordpress blogs on, and the absolute best is HostGator.
The absolute worst is AN Hosting. I was attracted to them, because it seemed like such a good deal but in the end I got what I paid for. My site would suddenly go down at least 2-3 times per week often for as long as 2 hours.
They always had an excuse about having to re-boot servers or something else. Eventually, they started suspending my account claiming I was using too much of their CPU.
Keep in mind the only thing I was running was a single WordPress blog. Granted, I use a fair amount of plugins and it’s somewhat memory intensive but it wasn’t anything extreme or out of the ordinary.
Finally, I decided to switch and this time I did my research. I have had a great experience with Go Daddy in the past, but for some reason GoDaddy has problems running the WP-Cache plugin.
I kept hearing about HostGator.com and how great they were for WordPress sites. I called them up and told them what had been happening to me at AN Hosting, and was assured that my site would never come close to using too much CPU, even if I added 10 more plugins.
HostGator moved my entire site from AN Hosting to my new account free of charge. In 24 hrs my site was moved in its entirety over to my new hosting account.
Since then, I have had absolutely flawless service from them with no downtime whatsoever. They have brand new top of the line servers that are blazing fast, and I can get instant help with anything 24 hrs a day.
If your looking for a top notch host to run a wordpress blog you really cannot go wrong with HostGator!
September 20th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
This is very informative post, regarding the rightful selection of the hosting services of a company to run the blogs successfully without any technical drawbacks which may disappoint you amidst the growth of the blog if you select free web hosting, you come to know that there is less space to share data of your site or blog. SO always try to find out the reliable web host service provider.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Great post, thanks for the info
May 6th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Choosing a hosting server is a tough work. Some selective factors for hosting may be found here.
http://dx-tech.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-choose-hosting-servers-and.html
I think choosing a dedicated server is safe to run a website having a very heavy traffic.
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