…on my blog, that is.
If you’re someone who regularly follows my blog, you might have noticed that it was down for a while last Friday.
And then it was back up again, but missing about a week’s worth of posts.
(If you didn’t notice, don’t worry. My feelings aren’t hurt…much. But my ego may never be the same…)
After spending a few days struggling to restore the posts and get back what was lost, I felt the need to write this post… about the importance of having good web hosting.
See, it was because of a problem with the hosting company’s servers that the site went down.
And even once the site came back up, there were problems with creating and publishing my posts.
My brother’s blog had the same problem. It didn’t go down, but somehow he lost a month’s worth of posts.
It’s been a real pain in the behind trying to get everything back up. Some posts I’ve lost completely, because I had no backup of my blog posts. But I’ve learned from this experience.
All this has just brought back to me these two things:
1) That I need to backup all my work,
2) That it’s important to have good, reliable web hosting for my website.
What happened to me is a good example of why hosting is so important, especially for internet marketers.
Think about it.
Your website needs to be available and accessible 24/7, 365 days a year.
Otherwise, if your website goes down even for a little while, this could have serious consequences for you and your business.
You stand the chance of losing sales, customers and data.
Also, if you’re running your company email off your hosting servers, that could mean an inability for you to communicate – with your team, business partners, customers.
So if you’re serious about your business and want to make the most of your website, it’s time to start thinking about getting really good hosting. You know, so that what happened to me hopefully won’t happen to you.
Here are some points to consider when selecting a web hosting provider:
1. Location
Where are the servers located? And where do the majority of your site visitors come from?
If they’re from the US, try and get a hosting provider that is located there.
This allows the site to load quicker for your visitors and provides a smoother browsing experience for them.
(Remember my previous post about website speed and how it affects conversions?)
2. How long has the provider been in business?
You’re looking for a host that will be around for a long time, not one that will close down and leave you searching for a new website host.
It’s a bit risky to work with a provider that’s fairly new, because hey, you have no idea if they’ll still be around in the next five years, or ten.
The company should have been around for at least 5 years or more before you consider using their services.
3. Quality of support
You should definitely get a provider with good 24/7 support.
Don’t send them an email. Call them directly if possible and see how quickly they answer the phone. Ask about their response rate for support requests.
Make sure they have an experienced, highly qualified team to support you, so that if an issue crops up, you can be assured that it will be resolved quickly.
4. SLA (Service Level Agreement)
An SLA is a contract between you and your hosting provider, in which your hosting provider guarantees a certain level of service at all times.
If they don’t provide you with the agreed level of service, they incur penalties.
Checking the SLA will help you not to over-estimate the provider’s level of service, and give you an idea of how serious they are about what they do.
5. Backups
How does the hosting provider deal with backups of your data and work?
I had to use a site like CachedPages.com just to restore my posts, as well as rely on the soft copies of Microsoft Word documents that I had saved. As it was, I didn’t manage to recover all my blog posts, because CachedPages had only saved posts up to a certain point.
You should try to find a provider that offers daily (if not hourly) backups for your entire website and database, and that stores the backup data for at least a month, preferably on a different, offsite machine.
And of course, you should backup important data yourself, just in case.
6. Reliability
The hosting company should provide your website a 99% uptime guarantee, for obvious reasons.
