Typically, the Internet is constantly buzzing with traffic coming and going across high-powered tubes of bandwidth; all trailing in a blaze of 1’s and 0’s without stopping to realize what they’re doing. Should someone choose poor web hosting for their domain; a consumer might be pulled to a complete stop on a “404 Error”.

The tips below will make sure you never produce that error, or at least try.

If you’re concerned about some elements of your current web-hosting service, look into backup hosting services. In doing so, you have the ability to easily and quickly transfer to another provider with minimal downtime, should your current web host turn out to be completely untenable.

Use a separate company for domain registration rather than registering it via your web hosting company. This way, you will retain control of the domain name if you decide to switch web hosting companies for any reason. If you register your domain through the same company that provides your web hosting, you may lose control of the name in such circumstances.

When transferring your site between hosts, have a copy of your website at both your old and new hosts for a few days. It’s important to do this because it takes 6-48 hours for the DNS to propagate. During this time, some visitors will be sent to your old website, while others whose ISPs have updated their DNS info will be sent to your new site.

Find out if your web host service supports videos. Videos take a lot of storing space and bandwidth, and you might have to spend a lot for a plan that supports videos. You can save money by uploading your videos to YouTube for free and embedding them on your website.

Choose a web host that charges a low monthly fee. You can usually find a quality web host for between $5 and $10 per month. You may also be able to save money by paying for 12, 18 or 24 months of service at one time, instead of paying for web hosting services on a monthly basis.

If a web hosting package says they offer unlimited services, consider their statements carefully. Unlimited in one area might mean serious restrictions in another. This might just adversely affect your business goals. The unlimited bandwidth claims may actually be part of a tiered pricing system. Be sure to understand all of the terms and conditions of these unlimited deals so that you can make a very educated decision.

Make sure that the web host you select has a very high uptime guarantee. Uptime is the percentage of time that a server is online. For instance, if a web host claims that their servers provide 99% uptime, then their servers are online 99% of the time. You don’t want to select a web host whose servers do not provide high uptime percentages. This is why uptime is so important when selecting a host.

A key factor for choosing a web host is available tech support. Should your site go down for any reason, you do not want to have to wait for tech support to be available during specified business hours. If a company is offering less than a full 24-hour support, 7 days a week, year-round, they should not fall under consideration. You need to know that someone besides yourself is concerned with keeping your site up.

If you are going to obtain a shared web hosting solution, conduct some research on the websites that you will be sharing your server with. You should definitely avoid sharing servers with websites that participate in spam due to the fact that if any of these websites receive an IP address ban from search engines or internet service providers, your website will be banned along with them. Adult websites in particular tend to participate in these kinds of activities.

Hopefully, these tips will help you understand the structure of the Internet, and how web hosting fits into it. Don’t let poor web hosting service slow your website unnecessarily.