By Matt Ewing


People are reading this article because they look for a good web hosting service. And naturally you would like to receive the best agreement, which you can work with. A web hosting service is a big decision, which will have lasting effects, because you can use it, in order to support your business long into the future.

Today's modern PHP web host site is quite cheap and yet can still offer benefits to satisfy a customer.

The key issue will follow later but basic knowledge of PHP would help proceedings. It is an extremely well liked programming language which can be embedded in HTML. Its popularity was supported by the following characteristics:

a. It is free.

b. It can be used easily and with little trouble

c. It is able to be considered a fully object orientated language

d. It is platform independent.

e. It has a rapid pace on the Linux server and this can be used effectively in utilizing and constructing complex web applications.

f. It allows advanced programming and is very easy to integrate with web pages.

g. PHP also integrates very nicely with MYSQL.

In order to choose a PHP web hosting service, you need to take a number of factors into account. First of all it is not all that easy to get a satisfactory PHP web hosting service. Most of the web-hosting companies are in the business for a quick buck. They don't really care about the service, so situations like your PHP domain hosting being down for 2-3 days, and you not being able to do anything about it, because no support was available, are quite frequent. Most people go through a long trial and error process, before they find the right PHP web hosting solution. This is because the best web hosting companies are usually not very well known.

These issues can make choosing the right PHP provider seem a scary task. However, there are guidelines to take to make the situation much easier.

A PHP provider you can trust will offer these issues:

a. Issues of a technical nature. Applications such as MySQL, Perl,PHP, Cron, Python, or CGI should be provided to you. These things may not mean a lot to you but it is good to have them, so don't worry about them.

b. Bandwidth. This equates to how many visitors your site can have each month. For many users, 75GB per month will be satisfactory.

c. Price. Getting a service for no charge is not always good and paying a low fee does not always mean low quality. A price that should provide you with an enjoyable service would be around $10.

d. Statistics of web use. You would be surprised how important it is to have information regarding how many visits you have and who or what is linking to your site.

e. Script installers that were created with PHP web hosting in mind. Again, these are vital for many firms and need to be considered. This provision should be given to you by your provider at no extra charge to you. If a provider seeks a fee for this service, tell them that this will not be happening.

Turning attention to the free of PHP host provision, they can have many disadvantages related to them. All firms need revenue and if a firm provides this service for free, they may not be able to do it for too long. This income is produced by them, by advertisements placed upon your Web site. Some forms these advertisements will come in include:

a. Banner based advertisements

b. Adverts that pop-up on screen

c. Advertisements placed within new frames

The web site owner would have no control over these advertisements. This would clearly be a bad situation for a great number of firms to be in. Anecdotal evidence tells of the time one firm had advertisements for a rival product appearing on their site and this is not good. Unfortunately, as the service is free, there is not much that can be done to complain about it.

It is also true to say that free sites quite often crash. If the host caters for a great number of sites, this is likely to occur.

Furthermore PHP web site hosting companies, that are offering free services are generally not able to offer the range of features, that even a cheap web hosting company can.

Keeping the above in mind, it is a better idea to go for a paid but affordable web hosting service rather than a free one. The extra benefits offered by the paid services would easily make-up for the few dollars a month that they cost.

In order to zero in on the right cheap web hosting service, you will have to keep the following things in mind:

i. You should look for balance among the benefits you aim for. This is because when you opt for a low cost service, you have to make some sacrifices which may affect uptime, customer service or even security. So think about it and determine what would be the ideal combination of benefits you would like to have.

ii. If you want to have blogs, shopping carts or forums then installation tools would be good and this is where Cpanel could be handy. Cpanel can also assist with running centers of support and controlling MySQL databases.

iii. Services of support: 24/7 has to be your requirement. You can never predict a crisis so having this support is vital.

iv. Disc space: The amount of disc space you require will depend upon the amount of information your site will be managing. However, it's always better to have enough space keeping future requirements in mind.

v. Email Accounts: If a web hosting company acts cheap with essential facilities like email accounts, you should not think twice before dumping it. Web site hosting is a very competitive business, so you will be easily able to get a provider that offers unlimited email accounts.

There is always more research to be done and it still matters at this stage. You should look for firms providing offers. Does a firm with 30 day money back guarantee sound appealing to you? Would you be more interested in a firm that provides a guarantee of uptime? These firms are not always easy to find as they all require a level of money to make these promises. However they are available and if you can find them, they could be a good reason for choosing that firm.

These ideas should be added to your own research to make a decision on who best to sign up with to meet your needs and budget.

Can you ever be sure you made the right choice? If you are happy with the cost, the uptime, how many email accounts you have, the level of support that is available to you, if you can have access to vital statistics and having the option of PHP and Windows, then yes, it is possible to be happy with your choice.




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