When creating a blog, how often does the owner think about which hosting to choose? Many companies offer, at first glance, identical services, and sometimes it is difficult for an unprepared user to navigate among the various tariffs.
However, preparation is really important, as understanding the hosting characteristics will allow you not only to simplify the process of hosting your blog, but in some cases will also prevent problems in operation.
In our article, you will get acquainted with the main characteristics that will help you choose the right VPS hosting after creating your blog. You will be convinced that a well-chosen hosting can help your project to fulfill its functions and achieve its goals in the best possible way. We suggest starting with the main thing.
Defining the purpose of blogging
So, you started creating a blog and launching it. You understand what will be its theme, design, color scheme and, possibly, even future readers. What about goals? What is the main function of your blog? If you haven’t thought about it yet, then it’s time to do it right now.
Consider whether the blog will serve a commercial function now or in the future. This is important, as your project will attract more and more visitors as it develops, and you will need more resources.
Also decide what type of content you plan to post. If these are text materials, then hosting with a minimum amount of resources will suit you.
If you want to have a video blog or, for example, a photo blog with high-resolution images, then most likely you will need more resources.
Paid vs free hosting
Once the goals of your blog have been determined, it is worth deciding if you are ready to invest in your project. Let’s take a look at the features of free and paid hosting.
On free hosting, you do not need to pay for site placement. After creating a blog, you host its data on the server together with projects of other users and gain access to shared resources. In return, the hosting provider gets the right to place advertisements and various links on your site.
On paid hosting, you can choose how much resources you need to accommodate the required amount of files. Depending on this volume, the cost of the tariff plan will be added up. Also, only you own your site and manage its content and work.
The main differences are
The speed of work. On free hosting, the number of users of server resources is much greater than on paid hosting. Due to the fact that the required amount of resources is not always available, the site loading speed is several times lower. Such a resource is more difficult to promote in search engines, and, consequently, the number of readers of your blog will not grow.
Unlike paid hosting on free, you are not actually the owner of the hosted resource. At any time, the hosting company can, at its discretion, block your blog or simply delete it.
The amount of disk space on both types of hosting is limited. Free hosting has a fixed amount of resources, which is standard for all sites with any load. On paid hosting, you can upgrade to a plan with more resources if necessary.
Advertising. As we wrote above, after creating a blog and placing it on free hosting, you provide your resource as an advertising platform for the hosting company.
Technical support. This service is not available on free hosting, so if you have any questions, you will only need to use your knowledge.
Hosting reliability
The goal of hosting is to ensure that your blog is available whenever users access it on the Internet. To determine the quality of hosting, such a concept as Uptime is used – the percentage ratio between the time of normal uninterrupted operation of the server on which your resource is located, and the entire time during which you use the hosting.
Let’s say, using hosting for 100 days, your resource was available on the network all the time, except for 12 hours (half a day), which were associated with technical problems in the data center. In this case, the Uptime will be 99.5%. The higher the percentage, the more reliable the hosting works. For some hosters, this indicator tends to 100%, for example, Timeweb’s Uptime is 99.9%.
Pay attention to customer reviews and Uptime indicators – the more information you collect about hosting, the greater the guarantee of hosting stability.
Convenient control panel
If this is your first time creating your Internet project, then an important factor when choosing a hosting for your blog is the convenience of downloading data and managing files on your resource. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to the logic of work and the interface of the control panel.
Most paid hosting providers have a free trial period, during which you can work with the panel, understand how convenient it is for you to upload and manage your files. Timeweb, for example, offers users its own dashboard based on customer recommendations and comments. This important management detail will allow you to significantly reduce the time spent on the technical setup of your blog and focus on its content.
Disk space
The amount of disk space is the number of gigabytes available for your plan. It is used to store blog files, emails, and databases.
If your blog will only contain text content, then you can start with a small volume, for example 2 GB or more. Over time, when graphic or video files are added to the content of your blog, you can expand your disk space by choosing a tariff plan with a large volume.
We recommend choosing a plan with a reserve of disk space, but not too large, so that you do not have to overpay for unused resources.
CMS and Hosting Compliance
When choosing hosting for your blog, make sure that it meets the technical requirements of your site content management system (CMS). Typically, these requirements are for the hosting operating system, Appache web server, PHP. Which is used to build dynamic websites and MySQL databases.
For the most common CMS, these requirements are standard and all reliable hosting companies comply with them. If the hosting provider cannot offer a service that meets these requirements, then, this is not a very high-quality hosting. We advise you to pay attention to companies that offer hosting services focused on working with a specific CMS. In this case, you can be sure that your blog will work flawlessly.
Technical support
Even if you are a novice user with minimal hosting requirements, quality technical support will be an excellent help for you in case you have any questions about the management and operation of your blog. Therefore, we recommend stopping your choice on companies that provide free round-the-clock support in addition to hosting.
All in all
Having familiarized yourself in detail with all of the above points and taking them into account when choosing a company. We can guarantee that your hosting will meet quality standards. Invest your time in finding a reliable hosting provider. It will pay off with a successful and smooth running of your blog.
Source: hostens.com
