Finding a Dependable Blog Hosting

Choosing a blog host is one of the most important decisions you will make for your making money blog. Many blog owners make the mistake of going with the cheapest blog host, but are disappointed when they don’t live up to their expectations. Before you select a blog host you need to decide what features or requirements you need for your blogsite. This post will help you identify what factors are most important when selecting a dependable blog hosting and what considerations you need to make before signing up.

Reliability and Speed
You should look for a blog host with a guaranteed uptime of 99.9% or higher. For every minute that your blogsite is down you could be losing opportunities to make profit. That’s why I would rather pay a little extra for reliability and speed, than try and save with a cheap monthly hosting plan. Every professional blog hosting company should be located inside a secure data center facility. These data center should feature multiple and redundant connections to the Internet, power backups, climate-controlled rooms, and support staff that is on-site at all times. Some blog hosting companies offer virtual tours of their facilities for prospective customers.

File Storage and Data Transfer
Most blog hosting companies provide more file storage than you will ever use. File storage is the amount of disk space allocated on the blog host’s servers for your blog. If your blog consists of a lot of images, sound clips, or video files that occupy a lot of disk space you can add more file storage to your plan. When a visitor comes to your blog, all the text, pictures, and other files that make up your blog pages are transferred to your visitor’s computer. Data transfer is a measure of the total amount of information your visitors view each month. If you have large image, audio, or video files you may need more data transfer. High traffic blogs that receive hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors may also need more data transfer.

Custom Service and Support
A quality blog host should provide 24 x 7 toll-free telephone support. If your blogsite goes down in the middle of the night, it’s reassuring to know there’s a real person on the other line that can help you with your problem.

Scripting and Database Access
If you’re planning on building a dynamic or database-driven blogsite that requires serverside scripting (like PHP, Perl, and ASP), make sure to select a hosting plan that provides these services. For example, some blog hosts have a “basic” or “starter” plan that may not include support for server-side scripting and database access.

Web-based Control Panel
Most blog hosts offer a web-based control panel for their users. This control panel allows you to login into your hosting account using a web browser from any location. A good control panel will allow you to:
• Upload, edit, or delete files
• Create, edit, or delete folders
• Manage your e-mail accounts
• Create, edit, or delete sub-domains
• View your blogsite statistics

A web-based control panel is especially helpful for new blogmasters who are not familiar with the technical aspects of managing a blogsite.

Traffic Logs Access
Every time a visitor comes to your blog, details about their visit are tracked and stored on your blog host’s servers. These visitor sessions are stored in a log file, which can be downloaded and analyzed at any time.

These traffic logs track a number of different statistics:
• Where the visitor was referred from e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other blogs.
• If the visitor found your blog through a search engine your traffic logs will tell you which keywords they used.
• What pages the visitor viewed.
• How long the visitor was on your blog.
• What web browsers your visitors use e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox,Safari or Chrome.

My Recommendations
The best way to find a good blog host is to ask a real customer. An existing customer can tell you a lot more about a blog host than a brochure or promotional site. If you know another blog owner, ask them about their experience. Once you have a few blog hosting companies in mind, you may want to research them further using Google. From my experience, a good blog host is hard to come by and Host Gator blog host is the best ever I found in running all of my blogs.