Forum Web Hosting

Choosing the right web hosting for your forum can be quite a frustrating experience. If you go by the advertisements, most hosts would appear to be good for your particular needs. But there have been cases where web host have started out by providing great service, only to get mired later - overselling the shared servers, providing low service quality, not responding to problems promptly, etc. Such experiences lead to a renewed search for a new host yet again.

The way to avoid this predicament is to get quality information and to know the basics about web hosting clearly. This guide will attempt to take you through the paces so that choosing the right web host for your forum becomes an easy proposition for you.

The Basics of Web Hosting

As the business world becomes more and more dependant on the Internet, the choice of a web hosting provider is becoming very important. A wrong choice can leave you in the lurch. You may need to choose a good web host for a variety of purposes - making an e-commerce website, setting up a personal web page, or sharing data easily with all your employees across the world. Whatever be the reason, your choice would be critical. You should not focus only on the price and value of the web hosting package; you should also take into consideration things like high quality service and good web connections.

Now that you have a little bit of idea about the basics, we can move on to the methods and strategies you can use to identify the best web host for your requirements.

Here you'll find a list of Web Hosting Companies that can help you with your forum hosting. The following companies run forums on their servers and have been known to do so economically and efficiently.

Leading Web Hosting Companies that support Forums

(Arranged alphabetically)

Bluehost - www.bluehost.com
Hostgator - www.hostgator.com
Hostmonster - www.hostmonster.com
Hostpapa - www.hostpapa.com
ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com
Powweb - www.powweb.com
ServerPronto - www.serverpronto.com
Webhostingpad - www.webhostingpad.com

Even when you have a list of best web hosts (for your particular purpose) to choose from, you still may need answers to a number of questions so that you can make the final call. These would mostly be questions relating to your own requirements e.g., the amount of storage space that you would need, or the bandwidth amount that would be just right for you.

For forums, there is a rule of thumb. You generally need about 50 GB bandwidth monthly and around 10 GB of storage space. Again, these figures are for average sized forums and may vary on a case by case basis. If you have a forum where users discuss software problems, you would not need too much space, since they would use only a limited number of images. The situation would change dramatically if the forum in question is one where the users discuss the latest car models. Here, images would consume a lot of space and your requirements would thus increase significantly. Generally, your web hosting provider would guide you based on your needs, and you can choose a hosting plan accordingly.

Stability is the key

Moving your websites from one web host to another can be a nightmarish experience; often leading to downtime, loss of data and a number of other problems which may prove to be detrimental to your business. So stability is a very big criterion when you are choosing your web hosting provider.

So try to find a well established web hosting provider. Make sure you do a background check and talk to the existing clients to see whether they are satisfied with the service provided. If you have any doubt, don't take a risk. The hassle is not worth the little effort you may save on the research.

Price

This is of course a deciding factor for a number of people. How much money you need to pay primarily depends on your storage space and bandwidth requirements. Hosting is usually sold in packages based on a combination of these three options:

Shared Hosting
Dedicated Hosting
Virtual Private Server

You need to make your choice based on your budget and the size of your forum.

Details about the various options:

Shared Hosting - In this option, the server is owned by the web host and is rented out in parts to a number of people. This is the most economical option if budget is your primary concern. But your performance may suffer since the various sites on the server keep competing for the server's resources on a continuous basis. This may result in your site running slow and you may also suffer outages.

Dedicated Hosting - Having a dedicated server, on the other hand, gives you the best performance at a high cost. Since only your own site is present on the server, there is no competition for server resources. But this requires you to have a good knowledge about managing servers. Else, you can pay a third party to manage your server for you. You have the choice of either taking the server on rent or buying it outright.

Virtual Private Server - this is like a combination of the two options above. Although you share a Virtual Private Server (VPS), the server resources are divided up in such a manner that you get dedicated resources and do not have to compete for them continuously. This option gives you the best of both worlds.

Service

This is another major deciding factor in your search to find the best web hosting provider for your forum. Good service and technical support form the backbone of the web hosting service. You may safely choose a provider which is very popular, since a large number of clients is a good indicator of the quality and stability of the web host. Just remember that they are also the ones who are under the maximum amount of resource strain, since they are servicing such a large number of clients. If your web host has too many clients, service may suffer or your site may become slow because of resource competition on the server.

Be sure to test the technical support capabilities of the hosting provider that you choose. Check with the existing clients. The following checklist may aid you in your efforts:

How fast can they come up with solutions to your problems?
How good are the solutions provided?
Are the technicians always on call?
What is the support policy on holidays and after work hours?
How responsive are they on email?
Do they make service a priority or are they prone to evasions and excuses?

The answers to these questions will give you a good idea about which provider to opt for.

The final word

Searching for a good web hosting provider can be quite a daunting task, but the above guide will help you in your efforts considerably. Just remember one thing - choosing a web hosting provider is like getting married. divorce is a messy affair you'd rather not go through! Look around, do your research well, and then take a final decision after weighing all the pros and cons.

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