Technical Specifications for Your Website Hosting

The first thing you need to do when shopping for a web host is to evaluate your disk space and bandwidth needs. If your site will feature a lot of graphics, dozens of pages and get a lot of traffic, you're going to need decent amounts of bandwidth and disk space. Unlimited plans are available, and they make life easier. If your site is going to be simple and not generate a huge amount of traffic, you should be able to get away with smaller amounts of disk space and bandwidth.

Keep compatibility in mind, too. In the excitement of looking for a website hosting provider, you might overlook one critical thing: the type of operating systems that are supported. You're not going to want to switch operating systems, so double-check this point before settling for a provider.

Reliability and availability are critical characteristics to consider when shopping around for web hosting. The best web hosting providers offer availability rates of 98 and 99 percent. This is frequently referred to as “Uptime”. It's easy to make such claims, though, so make sure to see if they make good on their promises.

Security is also an essential concern. Choosing a web hosting provider without learning about its available security features is a big mistake. Things like firewalls, daily backups and user authentication should all be included. It's also nice to receive notifications whenever changes are made because they can alert you to suspicious activity.