|
Happy Host Shopping |
We begin with the idea, usually generated by viewing other sites, or the
pressure of competitive business. From there, many begin learning how to
develop a site of their own and/or hire a designer. If self-education is
the plan, there is a wealth of information, tutorials, beginners' guides,
advice and more on the Internet, available for free. If the owner decides
to hire a designer they tend to be quite picky, and rightfully so. The first
thing the owner will do is begin viewing sites that a designer has created,
without regard to how much the designer charges, how long the designer takes
to build a site, nor how friendly or stern the designer is to work with.
After the owner has selected a number of designers, that have shown the
ability to create a site the way the owner envisions his own, he will then
consider the other areas of money and speed and personality until the final
choice is made. When we look at hosts, everything seems to take a different
twist. We seem to look at price first without regard to the other areas
of service being provided. After we have found the correct price ranges,
we then look at the services offered. Once this list has been created
we can look at other sites on the server and run the trace routes to check
for speed and reliability. The majority seems content to hand the host
their credit card once they have established the following:
- Price
- Options
- Speed
- Reliability
|
| Nine times out of ten the issue of tech support will not be
considered until after the site owner has had at least three separate occasions
where they have had a question that were failed to be answered by the host.
Reliability is a volatile situation. The same host that had been up for
three months straight can easily be put into overdrive on the fourth month
leaving them sluggish or even down for any number of minutes, hours, days,
or weeks, depending on their upgrade path, if they have a path at all. Options
seem to come and go with hosts as technology offers new things, servers
are upgraded and changes are made to meet demand. Tech support seems to
fall into the same category as speed and reliability. The tech support may
be awesome, but as the server fills up, will there be more people around
to handle the questions or will it too become sluggish or non-responsive?
The only thing left from the above list is price, which for the most part
seems to hold steady if you decided to pre-pay for a year in advance.
If you cannot truly determine which host is going to be able to suitably
serve your site by price, options, speed, reliability, or tech support,
what do you have left? Where do you as the site owner stand a chance in
making the right choice? Luck, seemed to be the most dependable aspect
of ending up with a decent host. This of course, is not an acceptable
or dependable thing to go by. The next phase was only a matter of time,
and it has now begun. Host directories have started to pop up. People
working to offer other site owners a place to communicate about their
experiences with various hosts and support while the owners sort out the
good from the bad from the ugly in web presence providers.
In concept these directories seem to be a wonderful way to help the site
owner choose a host. As of yet, they seem to be doing a good job with
helping to gather together a list of anywhere from twenty to thousands
of hosts for the site owner to choose from. Offering information about
the host's prices, options, speed, reliability, and even tech support.
The issues mentioned above still remain though. How accurate is the information
the directory gives you? How long will it remain accurate? What about
the over ten thousand other hosts that are not in the directories? How
does the directory determine what host is good and what host is not? Is
there no hope for finding the right host? Or are we missing something
from our criteria lists?
When a child is being taught how to add 2 + 2 we often times use objects
to explain the equation. "If you have two apples, and I give you two
more apples, how many apples will you have?" Using something the child
can visualize and understand is what helps the child to improve their abilities
with the concept of addition. It's simple logic now rather then a guessing
game. Is it possible that by thinking about something we are more familiar
with in our day-to-day lives we could then better understand the 'equations'
involved in selecting a host? Would we then find something to depend on
rather then luck, when choosing a host? I certainly think it's worth a try!
Car buying is something that the majority of us have had experience with.
|
|
|
|
