Web Hosting

follyfoot

Hello
I am putting together some contents for a friends website. The web designer asked us if we wanted him to host the site. Well i am not really sure since i dont really know what to look for in a host. He is charging about £7/month which compared to UK2net is expensive. What are some of the main questions i should be asking him since i am totally out of my depth here?

weegie.geek

Don't let him host it. Especially not at 7 pounds a month. Keep these things separate, and keep control of it by yourself. If something happened to the designer, you'd be stuffed.

If it's a friend's website, chances are it's quite a small affair. What is the website for? You'll probably get away with a couple of pounds a month, on a decent host too.

EvilScotsman

Main things:

What is included for £7?
What is the expected uptime if you host it e.g. 99.99% availability?
Will he make changes if you want them done?

This might help: http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/findhost.shtml

weegie.geek

If there's more than hosting being offered then it might be worth the 7 quid a month, but considering he'll have an account that costs a tenner a month that has dozens of websites on it, 7 quid a month is a bit much.

follyfoot

weegie.geek wrote: »

Don't let him host it. Especially not at 7 pounds a month. Keep these things separate, and keep control of it by yourself. If something happened to the designer, you'd be stuffed.

If it's a friend's website, chances are it's quite a small affair. What is the website for? You'll probably get away with a couple of pounds a month, on a decent host too.

I am waiting for him to explain what is involved. my friend is a freelance softskills trainer so the site just needs to mention the courses she trains, price, company info. she may later want to allow her students to book and pay for a course online.

weegie.geek

Ok, that'll be a tiny site, a few pages and not a particularly busy site. http://www.hostfor99p.co.uk/

the 99p/month (+vat) package there will be more than enough. I've been hosting a few small personal sites and my email with those guys for a few years now, I don't remember any downtime and it's always been nice and fast. They host at BlueSquare in London, pretty much the best mainstream datacentre in the UK, along with RapidSwitch.

follyfoot

weegie.geek wrote: »

Ok, that'll be a tiny site, a few pages and not a particularly busy site. http://www.hostfor99p.co.uk/

the 99p/month (+vat) package there will be more than enough. I've been hosting a few small personal sites and my email with those guys for a few years now, I don't remember any downtime and it's always been nice and fast. They host at BlueSquare in London, pretty much the best mainstream datacentre in the UK, along with RapidSwitch.

thanks for that. the designer said i needed PHP but the hostfor99p.co.uk doesnt mention this. i should have also said she might blog - does this make a difference?

weegie.geek

Yep, it has PHP. It's pretty much a necessity these days so I guess they don't feel the need to mention it.

I went for Directadmin as my control panel with them, and it has installatron which will let you install a Wordpress blog with a few clicks.

follyfoot

weegie.geek wrote: »

Yep, it has PHP. It's pretty much a necessity these days so I guess they don't feel the need to mention it.

I went for Directadmin as my control panel with them, and it has installatron which will let you install a Wordpress blog with a few clicks.

and this host will allow me to update my site at anytime?

Lil306

follyfoot wrote: »

and this host will allow me to update my site at anytime?

Yes,

All "hosting" is, is them keeping your website files on their servers and their servers are always switched on and network available which allows you to access your site whenever you want

You are given a control panel (normally something like cPanel or DirectAdmin) which gives advanced control over your website

Beware of the goons who say you get unlimited everything, it's fake, there's no such thing

weegie.geek

Yep, you get full FTP access, and you can log into the control panel to do backups, install things like blogs and galleries, do maintenance etc.

Lil306 wrote: »

Beware of the goons who say you get unlimited everything, it's fake, there's no such thing

Indeed. Most people don't even NEED more space/transfer/etc than an equivalently priced host would offer, and any who would need a lot will get kicked off an unlimited host for using too much. There's always a clause.

There's an element of overselling that's acceptable, and any good host who oversells will increase capacity when needed so the customers never notice any slowdown, but offering unlimited (especially something physical and finite like drive space) is just silly.