Finding The Best Web Hosting And Domain Registrar
February 25th, 2008 | by ScottIt appears that you're new here, if you like what you read, please subscribe to the news feed or sign up for the Leap eTips news and updates email list. Thank you for visiting :)
I try to focus on helpful topics with this blog most of the time (my occasional rant aside), and in my own mind that means topics on growing your site(s) and growing your traffic. With my 10 plus years of building web sites and working with hosting providers and domain registrars I sometimes forget that not everyone visiting my blog has that same experience; and from many of the questions I get it’s actually obvious that some don’t even really understand what domain registrars and web hosting providers do… and don’t do for you.
So, this posting is really for the complete “newbie” who has never registered a domain name or used a web hosting company before. I’m going to explain what these are, what you should expect from the companies you use and even offer a little help with finding reliable and reputable companies to deal with. It’ll save you time, money and frustrations in the future if you learn how to determine what makes the best web hosting and domain registrar company for your needs now.
What is a registrar?
In simple terms, a domain registrar is an authorized seller of domain name registrations. When you purchase a domain name you’re not purchasing a physical product, you’re purchasing the registration of a certain web address which you can then point to your server or web hosting account so that when people visit that domain address they’re delivered to your web site.
The registrar’s function is to attach your information to the domain name and facilitate that “pointing” process so that your visitors find your web site when they type your domain into their web browser.
It’s a little more technical than that, but for 99% of the world who won’t be dealing with the more complex issues of domaining that description is probably adequate.
Are all domain registrars created equal?
In a word, yes and no. While all of them do the same thing, they don’t all do it for the same price; and there have been some instances of domain registrars using shady tactics or worse, disappearing on customers without notice leaving lots of people in a real pickle.
To avoid these hassles and not get bilked on pricing I always refer friends and family to the following 2 domain registrars:
www.GoDaddy.com & www.NameCheap.com
Both have been in business a long time (almost no chance they’d ever disappear) and have solid reputations in the industry. Also, both charge competitive rates (about $9) for .com registrations. Paying more than that somewhere means you’re paying too much, and paying less somewhere means there’s a risk involved in my opinion.
Finding the best web hosting provider?
A web host is kind of like an Internet landlord. They operate servers that–like a large apartment building–will be home to lots of tenants (or web sites), and for a monthly fee you can house your web site on their server.
In short, a server is just a computer with some special software running on it and a high speed constant connection to the Internet.
Are all web hosting companies created equal?
Absolutely not. When gaging hosting providers it helps to keep that landlord analogy in mind. What I mean is you want a web host who is going to be helpful and supportive when you call–just as you would want your landlord to be when a pipe breaks.
You want them to understand the dangers of the neighborhood your server is in too, and for them to be on top of all the latest security measures that will prevent the riff-raff from getting inside and making trouble.
You also want a provider who’s got a good reputation, if it were a landlord you’d love to hear that current tenants really like him wouldn’t you? Same thing with a host. If the web hosting company has a customer forum on their web site (many do) that’s a good place to look around and see how their customers talk about the service. Are they constantly complaining about stuff, or do they generally seem to enjoy their experiences with the host? A little time spent reading threads on the host’s forum should give you a good idea of how their current customers think of them.
Another resource if the host doesn’t have a forum is on blogs. People who run their own blogs are paying for hosting, and bloggers who have been around for a while have likely gone through several hosts over time to find the best web hosting for them.
Obviously I’d say ignore a recommendation from a blog that appears to be spammy or designed for marketing, there are a lot of those that have been made just to fool people. But blogs that you normally follow and trust are a great place to find information and credible recommendations.
In-fact, the host I always refer friends and family to is one I found based on a blogger’s recommendation and I’ve been nothing but happy with them for a long time now:
HostGator
They’ve been around for many years, have a great reputation and happy current customers (I know this personally), the support people are always available and friendly and the pricing is below what I pay with some other hosts I use and have used before.
HostGator also lets you register your domain through them when signing up for hosting, which is a bonus in my opinion as it eliminates me having to do that with a separate domain registrar on my own. Anything that saves me time and work is always good!
They use cPanel as the control panel for hosting accounts. It’s the most common control panel out there and is super easy to use. There’s tons of single-click-install software and scripts for setting up things like a blog or forum on your site–and you can even use these free video tutorials to learn how to do everything in cPanel at your own pace.
I think that about covers finding the best web hosting and domain registrar pretty well. You want stability and reliability from each, and you don’t want to be burned with paying too much for either. If you still have questions about domain registrars or web hosting please feel free to ask them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them as fast and best as I can for you.
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4 Responses to “Finding The Best Web Hosting And Domain Registrar”
By Debbie on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Hi Scott,
I’m one of those “newbies” looking for a web host. Presently, I have two university host servers for my professional websites. I’m at the point where I would like to develop my own websites, with my own domain name. The information that you provided will give me a good start. Thank you. Now for 3 questions that will demonstrate my ignorance. First, I’m interested in teaching my own online course. What kind of platform would be the best for asyncronous learning? Currently, I use a platform through a university called OLS. Do web hosts offer different platforms, or would that be software that I would get? Second, I would like to offer a service to educators, sort of like Napster, where educators could share curriculum, lesson plans, etc. Is file sharing something that web hosts offer? Finally, I have an idea for an interactive website, similar to http://www.freerice.com for elementary students. When looking for a web host, what kind of information should I look for in developing websites for my ideas? Thanks for your help.
By Scott on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Hi Debbie, those are some great questions and I’ll try to give you the best advice I can with the information you provided.
For teaching your online course there are a lot of options, free and commercial, and the decision ultimately is going to be based on what specific features you need and want. Not knowing nearly enough about your plans and goals it’s hard for me to make suggestions so I can really only offer this from experience: Joomla with Community Builder.
Joomla is a free content management system (fancy backend for running a site), and the Community Builder add-on lets you turn your site into a community portal. There are also additional add-ons all available at Joomla’s web site and many of them would probably be helpful as well. Off the top of my head I seem to recall there being one that allows a sort-of file sharing capability, real time chat, forums and so on that could all be used to create an engaging and interactive learning environment.
I know of a grade school teacher who uses Joomla on a site like this as an extension to her classroom for giving her students additional help and tutoring, so it seems like a natural fit for you.
Joomla is free as I said, and most hosts will have a simple method for installing it to your hosting account (called Fantastico so look for that feature when picking your web host).
If you’re planning to charge for the online courses you offer that adds another level of complexity to the setup, but there are add-on modules for Joomla that allow you to create member levels (guest, free, paid, etc.) and charge membership/access fees through Paypal or some other common service.
I’m not a frequent user of Joomla myself because I don’t build a lot of community type sites, but I have made membership sites with it in the past using the add-ons you can get right from the main Joomla site so I know they’re there, I’m afraid it’s just been so long ago now that I can’t remember the specific add-on names for you, but you can easily search the add-ons at Joomla and should be able to find everything you would need.
There are many other online learning platforms out there too, but since Joomla is free, has a large community of supporters who contribute to upgrading and expanding it, is easily customizable and having a fairly easy to use administration system once you get to know it Joomla would be my best suggestion.
On your 2nd question, I’m not sure if you’re thinking of integrating the file sharing for educators into your learning course site or not, but as I mentioned there are some add-ons for Joomla that create moderate file sharing capabilities, so even if you are planning this as a separate web site then again I would suggest using Joomla for it.
Without running your own dedicated full servers you’re not going to be able to fully duplicate a service like Napster. No web host will permit it because of security and the resources involved.
But I think you can come pretty close with Joomla and a few add-ons, you can certainly create an easy to use environment for educators to upload and download files with each other.
And if you are building this as a separate site, you could also use a membership setup here too if you want to charge for certain levels of access, or just restrict access to certain areas for approved users.
On the last question, FreeRice is run with a pretty simple Javascript application, so any web host would be able to handle a site like that.
Personally, I’d have used Flash for the site to make it even more interactive and feature rich, so that may be something for you to look into; but again any host can handle Flash embedded web pages.
If you need help programming your site when the time comes, my advice is to checkout Rent-A-Coder ( http://www.rentacoder.com ). If you can explain what you want you can find someone there to create it for you at a crazy cheap price.
When looking for a web host it can be a bit of a crap-shoot unfortunately because it’s so easy to create a hosting startup that there’s a lot of Teen-owned and One-Guy-With-A-Server operations out there which tend to be unreliable and often vanish in the middle of the night.
That’s why I make recommendations from time to time of services I’ve used, because I know they’ve been around for a few years already and I trust their support.
If you know what features you need, and everything I’ve mentioned here would fall under common features that most hosts offer, then I’d say look around for recommendations from folks you trust who have their own sites, or ask around on a popular webmaster forum or two.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com is a good one where you can get a wide range of suggestions and experiences on various hosting services.
I hope this helps you out. Please feel free to ask any additional questions or tell me if I was unclear on any of this.
Thanks and good luck!
By Joomla web hosting on Jun 19, 2008 | Reply
Another great article by Scott :)
I myself use hostgator, I haven’t had a single problem with them.
Thanks for the article, very useful!
By blogN on Jun 25, 2008 | Reply
I use Dynadot.com to register all my domains.