I HATE MY HOSTING COMPANY! Take this advice so you don’t end up hating yours too.

OMG, WTF, I’m so not ROTFLMAO…. My web host is the WORST! Ever. Period.

Listen to this little rant of mine and hopefully you can avoid making the same mistake I did.

My site has been down a total of 6 times in the last 5 days. You heard correctly, down six times in five days! Once for over four hours (that I was aware of), once for at least three hours (again, that I knew about), three other times for at least an hour each time, and one additional instance for about 15 minutes (again, that I was aware of, could have been hours).

Stay away from these companies

This is nothing short of unacceptable. And to help anyone out there looking for a hosting provider, my hosting company is: ANHOSTING.COM and just so you know, they suck.

In reality, my host is a company called MidPhase, who also operates the following web hosts: www.autica.com, www.singlehop.com, and www.enterasp.com. All run as individual companies, but if you sign up with them, you’ll receive an email from Midphase welcoming you (as I did).

When I was researching web hosts I thought I did a good job. I checked for all the prerequisite features normally found on a “good” host.

Key features your host must provide

• An actual toll-free number to call for real, live, tech support. More importantly, one that is available 24/7
• That they support PHP 4.x/5.x (scripting language that Wordpress uses)
• Support of Cron Jobs (a time triggered unix command useful for certain applications such as some affiliate management programs, database management, and other things. A little more technical than my scope, but something I know is important to have, and have used in the past)
• CGI support (Common Gateway Interface. Provides an interface between an external application and the web host. Just in case I ever wanted any custom e-commerce apps, or similar. Unlikely, but you never know)
• MySQL 4.4.x/5.x (SQL Database management system - a must have for WordPress, if you want to host a forum, and a ton of other things)
• Several available SQL databases (right now I’m using two, one for this Wordpress application and one for my forum. I wanted at least 10 to provide for expansion)
• At least 10 domains
• Unlimited sub-domains (i.e. http://FORUM.tysblog.com, or http://anything-you-want.yourdomain.com, etc.)
• Unlimited email accounts
• Standard email stuff: SMTP, POP3, and IMAP
• Webmail access (so you can access your email in a web browser, very useful)
• Unlimited Email autoresponders (to automatically reply to emails. Very useful for sales campaigns, marketing campaigns, etc.)
• Unlimited FTP accounts (File Transfer Protocol. Assign accounts to users (or just yourself) to transfer data to/from your host, i.e.; images, docs, etc. using an FTP client. I use Smart FTP)
• And “cPanel“, my preferred web based control panel to manage all that stuff above.

There are other useful applications and tools available through hosting companies, but the ones above are the required basics for what most people will need now, and allow for a little room to grow in the future.

But NEVER forget

The one things I totally forgot to make sure they offer is :99.9% (or better) uptime guarantee!!!

This is KEY! I can’t believe I overlooked this. AAARRRGGGHH.

Another thing I suggest doing (that I didn’t really do) is to ask for referrals, ask your friends, ask around the blogging community. Just do a little research on whatever company you’re about to sign up with beforehand. It can save you tons of unnecessary frustration after it’s too late.

Fellow blogger, Jason, from blogging4cash.com (great blog about blogging) and the new and up-and-coming theSEOeotree.com (an all-in-one social network/directory/forum/blog all about boosting your SEO efforts.) suggested I use www.hostgator.com, said he hasn’t had any issues with them and they’re responsive to support tickets. You may want to start there if you are lookin’…

Follow the advice above, learn from my mistakes and you should be all set the next time you’re choosing a web host! :mrgreen:

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