When you’re thinking of making the switch from a hosted website platform - like Blogger, WordPress.com, Squarespace or similar - to hosting your own site, the whole process can seem like a daunting, mysterious vortex. One from which you’ll never escape!
Before you even get to thinking about the fun bit - how it’s going to look and which of your illustrations you want to display - there’s a whole raft of decisions, tech-filled tasks and foreign-sounding hurdles to negotiate.
One of these - the starting point for everything - is which hosting company to choose. We’ve put together this basic guide to help you select a hosting company for your illustration portfolio site…
Things You Want
Good support options - there’s nothing more frustrating than your site going down and you not being able to contact anyone about it. Ideally your hosting company should have a range of support options from being able to submit a support ticket, to a phone line to a live support option on their website. The latter has been our preferred option every time and we’ve been able to get a resolution via the live support option every single time, bar one.
Control panel access - some hosting companies give you very limited access to the control panel which means they require you to log a support ticket (and sometimes even pay) whenever you need even the tiniest of things doing. Things you will probably want to ensure you have access to include:
- Something like Simple Scripts or Fantastico Deluxe which let you install WordPress in one click (automatically instead of having to do it manually).
- FTP access which means you’ll be able to access all the files on your site using an ftp tool
- It’s also useful to have access to your domain settings so you can change things like DNS settings and MX records which you may need to do to set up things like Google Apps on your domain or make sure your domain names work properly.
Reliable Up time - obviously you want your site to be up 100% of the time, so it’s worth checking out the reliability and stability of any hosting company you’re considering. Often doing a quick search on Google will show up dissatisfied customers and problems with reliability.
Plenty of storage & bandwidth - this is obviously good to have because it means you can host as much data as you want without having to pay for additional storage on your account, and that you can transfer it back & forth (and people can access it) without having to pay for extra bandwidth.
Some people will tell you to be wary of “unlimited” accounts - you should definitely check that there are no caveats on the “unlimited” claim and be aware that your data is likely to be hosted on shared servers which means you’re effectively renting space on a server along with hundreds of other people.
Hosting accounts can sometimes use something called “throttling” to control the space on & access to a server which can impact the performance and speed of your site - and, if you do happen to experience massive traffic, the hosting account could pull the plug and/or charge you more. However, for most people with average traffic unlimited data accounts should be fine and a dedicated server is costly and unnecessary.
Unlimited domains/websites/email addresses - many hosting accounts let you host as may websites as you want on a single account. This is great if you, like us, have a habit of building websites and can see yourself building multiple websites at some point in the future. It’s also then useful to have an associated email address with each domain so check any limits on email accounts you’re allowed.
Unlimited MYSQL databases - if you plan to use WordPress (and you know we’ll tell you that you should!), then WordPress websites need MYSQL databases, so if you’re planning on having several, then check out any limits on databases. It’ll be no use having the ability to host multiple sites if you have to pay more for more databases.
Things to Look Out For
Extra bells & whistles - some hosting companies (GoDaddy & similar, I’m looking at you!), will do their level best to upsell you all manner of bells & whistles while you’re purchasing your hosting account or registering a domain name. More often than not, these are overkill and just not necessary. And besides, you can always purchse them at a later date if you do decide you need the,
Location - depending upon your client base or where you operate from, it can sometimes be beneficial to select a hosting company local to you (when I say “local”, I mean in the same country).
Lowest price - when it comes to hosting, cheapest isn’t always best. Avoid going for the very cheapest hosting company you can fund, unless you’re satisfied that it meets all the criteria you need.
Money Back Guarantee - once you sign up for a web hosting company, all is not lost. Many have a 60-,90- or more-day back guarantee which means that if you’re not happy, you can move your site to another hosting company.
Our Recommendation
Over the years, we’ve used several web hosting companies - including GoDaddy, InMotion, Bluehost, Dreamhost, Hostgator, IX Web Hosting - and worked with many more for clients.
Our current hosting company, with which we host all our sites, is Bluehost. We’re more than happy with them and, although others have had problems (I think this happens with almost every hosting company), we never really have. We’ve always been able to resolve every problem (except from 1) via the live chat functionality and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them.
The bottom line is this: Use this guide to compare your options with, ensure there’s a money back guarantee and then sign up to a hosting company. Try them out and if they don’t perform as you expect and want them to, move.