Server and Web Hosting Importance
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Downtime means you are loosing money
The title pretty much explains it, if your site is down you are loosing money. That’s the only downfall of working online, if you have server problems you lose money. This really became apparent to me because this is the first time my site has gone down since it became my full time job. Since my websites are my only source of income any down time costs me money. Also if people see that it is down they might not come back, and if sponsors see that it’s down they will think that we are unprofessional.
Reliable Web Hosting
Reliable web hosting is something that you are going to want to have. Say you hit the front page of Digg and your site goes down, imagine the money that you could have made. I have had a few different front page Digg’s for a few of my sites and I would rather have had the boost in revenue then none at all. As I said my servers are hosted in a data center so I don’t deal with a hosting company. If anyone knows a good hosting company please post it below in the comments.
Being Knowledgeable About your Server
My servers run on Linux, but I really do not know that much about it. Every time there is a problem I can’t go off asking someone how to fix it. If you are running your own servers be sure to know what you doing and know the basic commands to stop and start services. If you are being hosted by someone else make sure you understand the control panel and know how to fix things if they go wrong. If you are lazy you can hire a server admin, but of course that costs money.
Access to the Server 24/7
Whether its web hosting or server hosting you need to have access to someone that can troubleshoot the problem 24/7. If your site goes down at 2AM you want it back up ASAP, you don’t want to have to wait till 9AM when the help desk opens back up. Also I would suggest finding a host that has a technical support line. I don’t like the idea of me e-mailing or submitting a help ticket (which is basically like e-mail) and waiting for them to get back to me. If there is a problem I want to talk to someone as soon as I see the problem. Also if you are hosting your servers somewhere you want to make it local so if there is a serious problem you can go to the data center and fix it yourself.
If you are running a successful website you don’t want it to go down so make sure you research your hosting options.
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Dont take it badly , but Your infrastructure is broken currently , you put all your eggs in the same basket.
Server is meaningless , Webhost is meaningless. When F.T.E.C.T.E , hits you. (Fire , Tornado , Earth Quake , Clueless worker , Tsunami , Electricity )
1. You have monitoring tools that send you E-mail , phone , others when your site is down ? if not Get some.
2. You relly on DNS service from Webhost ? Bad Idea !!
a) If the ISP decide to be an ass or not respond your down.
b) F.T.E.C.T.E hit your down.
Use **DNS faillover**. from DNS supplier with multiple location service. If people cant reach your site or webhost , you could have a billion hosting service on billion dollar webservers it would be meaningless.
3. You don’t have mirror ? Why ? you set up simple cheap mirror that are your second and third and fourth option in your DNS failover in case other dont respond. No need for massive bandwidth on them and take a service that can be upgraded in case the main site is down for a longer time. They serve as nice backup.
4. Hardware failure happens. Buy new affordable webserver each one - two year. Share the load on multiple server instead of one supper server. ( this one depend on budget. )
5. Use multiple location and services in different states , country. Share your server as backup host in return for the same favor from others.
6. Shop around every 3 - 6 month.
http://webhostinggeeks.com/
http://www.webhostmagazine.com/
http://reviews.cnet.com/web-hosting/
http://www.webhostingstuff.com/category/Unix-Linux-Web-Hosting.html
That’s my take on this. No need to change main host if it’s in your price range , just how your infrastructure is currently done.
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I heard http://www.softlayer.com is awesome. Definitely checkout http://www.webhostingtalk.com for web hosting stuff. People post bad reviews if anything happens to them so it’s really easy to find out which company is reliable.
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Yeah I understand that server quality is significant factor of site success…But honestly speaking, I never correlated it with money. Reading your post open my mind that it is a big lose as we not only have to spend fixing cost, but also lose the opportunity to get more traffic.
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