Quick Start To Creating Your Website!

What Is Hosting And How To Choose

Many clients have asked me this question: “I have a domain name.  Why do I need hosting?”

Let me give you a visual explanation.

Computers communicate with each other using numbers – called IP addresses (Internet Protocol) – to contact each other…just like you would use a phone number to dial up someone on a phone.  Domain names are like entries in a phone book.  You look for a name in a phone book and it gives you the phone number that you would dial to get the person or business you are looking for.  Then you would be able to speak to them at their home or business.

So in the case of the internet, you would type the domain name into your internet browser.  The internet knows the number that is connected to that domain name.  It takes you directly to the website for that domain.

Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server typically in a data center.  Hosting or a web-hosting server is like the space or building that you rent out for your business.  It’s basically just the space without the furnishings like shelves for your products. It’s up to you to furnish that space.

Lucky for you, it’s easy to furnish your space by installing a framework or platform such as WordPress.  Then, through WordPress, you can create your website, make it pretty, add some awesome services and set up your products.

Choosing a Hosting Company

When it comes to choosing a hosting company for your website, there are so many choices out there!  How do you know how to choose the best one?

Through the years, my experiences with other hosting companies have included the following:

• Constant downtime or downtime several times a year
• One company just quit and disappeared.  First they went down and my website was down for over 2 weeks.  Then everything disappeared.  Ugh!!
• Website files disappeared when they migrated to another server box – company never said sorry, never offered anything, didn’t have a backup of anything
• Website was shut down without any notice because of something out of my control with a horrible statement page that made it look to my viewers that maybe I hadn’t paid my bill.  This happened several times.
• Trouble using backup plugins – not always reliable due to technical issues with the server.

Here is what I’ve learned to look for based on my many years as a web designer.  I currently use Hostgator for myself and my clients.

If you decide to use another hosting service, please check to be sure they offer the features listed below:

Customer Support and Reliability

• HostGator sites are hosted in top-of-the-line Dual Xeon in their data centers at Dallas which are well equipped and connect to 10 backbone providers. Also, HostGator invests millions of dollars every year in new technologies for better performance. They have about 12,000 servers under management in Texas in the US.
• Customer service has always been excellent and they are very helpful, often going the extra mile for me.
• My favorite website backup plugins were always reliable when used on websites with Hostgator.  There are other servers that are not always so reliable where I had issues with it timing out with errors while uploading the backup file.
• In all the years that I have been with Hostgator, it has been rare to have any of my websites or my client’s site have any outages.

Ability to have unlimited domains, and unlimited disk space and bandwidth

• For the price you get with Hostgator, this is a great feature.  It’s nice to purchase just one hosting account and be able to use it for more than one website.

Comes with unlimited email

• (some hosting companies charge for the ability to have email)

User Friendly Interface

• Hostgator uses a conventional cPanel (control panel) which I love!  (Anything else that I’ve tried is harder to navigate and figure out where things are.)

Shared Hosting is fine for small businesses.

• I even ran my magazine website on Hostgator’s shared hosting where I had tons of video and content on my server AND I was getting over a million hits per month on my site – never had any trouble.

In summary, I’m happy to have found a hosting company that has served me well through the years and that I feel confident to recommend to others.

If you find another hosting company that you prefer, feel free to purchase from them.  However, if you want to follow my recommendations, you can also get an extra 25% discount by using my affiliate link.

It’s easy to sign up.

• Type the following link into your browser:  https://designitdigital.com/hosting2
• This will take you to Hostgator and then you can use my discount coupon code designitdigital25 to enjoy a total savings of 25% off your order!
• Watch the following video that will walk you through your hosting purchase at Hostgator.

If you already have hosting, go to the next step…Pointing Your Domain to Your Hosting.