{"id":157,"date":"2023-12-28T07:13:57","date_gmt":"2023-12-28T07:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/?p=157"},"modified":"2023-12-28T07:15:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-28T07:15:11","slug":"finding-your-first-host","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/finding-your-first-host\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Your First Host"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Finding<\/h3>\n

Finding your first host<\/a> can be intimidating. Although hosting will seem simple once you\u2019ve been around awhile, at first it\u2019s all very opaque. Part of the problem is simply that there\u2019s a lot of misinformation out there. There are hundreds of hosting providers, and all of them are trying to convince you that they\u2019re the right choice for you. Often, they do this by advertising features and services you don\u2019t really need. Other times they do it by advertising features and services that aren\u2019t really features and services at all, but simply part of hosting; like a gluten-free sticker on an apple, they\u2019re trying to make their product seem better by highlighting a feature which intrinsic to all such products.<\/p>\n

Despite this, it\u2019s not too awfully hard to differentiate the good from the bad in this regard. It\u2019s more just about deciding what you really need.<\/p>\n

The Big Players<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The big players, like GoDaddy or WordPress.com, tend to be a bit pricier, and what they give you in return is great customer support, extensive documentation, 24\/7 handholding<\/a>, and infinite attempts to upsell you on services you don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n

As long as you make the conscious choice to just say, \u201cNo!\u201d to GoDaddy help\/sales reps (they\u2019re essentially one in the same) you\u2019re going to be fine. This is also true of other major hosting providers.<\/p>\n

The Cheap Players<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

On the other of the spectrum are hosting providers like NearlyFreeSpeech, who offer low end, pay-for-play, services. There\u2019s not much in the way of help, but if you\u2019re comfortable in your ability to figure out the nitty gritty, or have friends who can help you out, they make a great option for those operating on limited budgets. Once your traffic picks up, though, you might actually save money going with a larger service.<\/p>\n

The Ones Who Let You Do Stuff<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The most important thing when choosing a hosting service is finding one who will allow you enough control over your site to get things done. Whatever option you choose, you\u2019re going to want to make sure your hosting provider has a few things going for them.<\/p>\n

FTP Access and SSH Access<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t know what FTP and SSH are, suffice to say they\u2019re the go-between services by which your computer can talk directly to your server (and thereby your website) without going through the public-facing side of the site.<\/p>\n

This is going to be very important to either you or the person helping you with your website at some point. For many sites, this access is the only way to fix a major goof on the backend of the site, and not having this access means you\u2019ll have to wait for the customer service team of the hosting provider to fix it. Not ideal.<\/p>\n

Reliability<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll want to check and make sure that your hosting provider has a reputation for keeping their servers up and online practically 24\/7. With all the options out there, there\u2019s essentially no reason to accept a service with an uptime less than 99%.<\/p>\n

Good Reviews<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve put together your top 3-5 choices, take a little time to research them, and find out what other customers are saying about their experience with the company.<\/p>\n

The Good News is You Can Change Your Mind
\nIt\u2019s not impossible to switch away from a host who\u2019s not being helpful, but it\u2019s not a trivial task for someone new to this end of technology, and it\u2019s better to just not need to.<\/h2>\n

If it does become necessary, don\u2019t stress out. The really good news is that your hosting provider knows this, too, and it gives them an incentive to provide decent help and service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finding your first host can be intimidating. Although hosting will seem simple once you\u2019ve been around awhile, at first it\u2019s all very opaque. Part of the problem is simply that there\u2019s a lot of misinformation out there. There are hundreds of hosting providers, and all of them are trying to convince you that they\u2019re the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hosting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/host2day.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}