Finding Hosting for Your Forum

By Matt Hedges

Selecting the right host for the forum can be a difficult time selecting the perfect host for you online forum, many adverts would indicate they provide the best service but do they? Quite often a host provides good service at first only for things to become poor. This may come from servers being sold to too many people, quality of service becoming poorer or having to wait a while for answers. These occurrences can cause a person to look for a new hosting provider.

A solution to this is to get the best quality information and understand what web hosting is all about. The following information will hopefully provide you with the knowledge that will make having a forum quite simple.

Web hosting and simple facts

As the business world becomes more and more dependant on the Internet, the choice of a web hosting provider is becoming very important. A wrong choice can leave you in the lurch. You may need to choose a good web host for a variety of purposes - making an e-commerce website, setting up a personal web page, or sharing data easily with all your employees across the world. Whatever be the reason, your choice would be critical. You should not focus only on the price and value of the web hosting package; you should also take into consideration things like high quality service and good web connections.

Given you now know the basics, there are techniques and strategies people can follow to find the best host for their needs.

Here you'll find a list of Web Hosting Companies that can help you with your forum hosting. The following companies run forums on their servers and have been known to do so economically and efficiently.

Forums can be found on these web host firms

1. Bluehost - www.bluehost.com

2. Hostgator - www.hostgator.com

3. Hostmonster - www.hostmonster.com

4. Webhostingpad - www.webhostingpad.com

5. ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com

6. ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com

7. ServerPronto - www.serverpronto.com

8. Webhostingpad - www.webhostingpad.com

Even when you have a list of best web hosts (for your particular purpose) to choose from, you still may need answers to a number of questions so that you can make the final call. These would mostly be questions relating to your own requirements e.g., the amount of storage space that you would need, or the bandwidth amount that would be just right for you.

If you want to host a forum, you will need round about 50 GB bandwidth per month and on average, 10 GB of space to store items. These figures are a general example and the needs of your website may differ. If the website you run does not have many images, you may not need a lot of space. However, if your site had a large number of graphics, the opposite would be the case. The host you choose should be able to provide you with information about what you require.

Aim for stability

It is not a good experience to move your website from host to host. This can cause downtime and a number of detrimental effects to your business. This is why stability is vital. Finding a reliable and established host is a must. Ensure you do a lot of research and know the industry well. If something seems not right, then leave it alone.

Price

This is of course a deciding factor for a number of people. How much money you need to pay primarily depends on your storage space and bandwidth requirements. Hosting is usually sold in packages based on a combination of these three options:

Virtual Private Server

Hosting that is dedicated

Having a virtual server that is private to you

The choice you make should be based on budget and key requirements.

Details about the various options:

Virtual Private Server - Combines the following two services. A person will use the VPS with others but the resources of the server are shared in such a way that each firm has their own well defined areas. This ensures you have resources solely for you and there is no competition for the right. This works well for many firms.

Dedicated Hosting - Having a dedicated server, on the other hand, gives you the best performance at a high cost. Since only your own site is present on the server, there is no competition for server resources. But this requires you to have a good knowledge about managing servers. Else, you can pay a third party to manage your server for you. You have the choice of either taking the server on rent or buying it outright.

Virtual Private Server - this is like a combination of the two options above. Although you share a Virtual Private Server (VPS), the server resources are divided up in such a manner that you get dedicated resources and do not have to compete for them continuously. This option gives you the best of both worlds.

Service

When looking for the best provider to host your forum you need to be aware of quality service and high level technical assistance. This should be provided by the best host providers. It can be simple to select a host to that is popular because if other users recommend the site, it must have some qualities. However, a popular site is a busy site and this may place extra strain on its resources. A lot of clients can be a bad thing when examining which host to work with.

Always find out what level of support is on offer from your host. Perhaps you can find existing or previous clients for an opinion on the firm. The following questions may help you make a better choice.

Can they offer quick solutions?

Can they offer quality solutions?

Are the technicians always on call?

What is the support policy on holidays and after work hours?

How responsive are they on email?

Do they make service a priority or are they prone to evasions and excuses?

Solutions offered to these questions will give you a better idea of what host is right for you.

The final word

Searching for a good web hosting provider can be quite a daunting task, but the above guide will help you in your efforts considerably. Just remember one thing - choosing a web hosting provider is like getting married divorce is a messy affair you'd rather not go through! Look around, do your research well, and then take a final decision after weighing all the pros and cons.

About the Author:

This article is published with permission from http://www.webhostingmadness.com, a provider of web hosting company reviews, articles and helpful guides on web hosting.