15 Minute Craft Website Tips  

If you have a website for your artwork, having a reliable host company to host it is an absolute must if you want your website to stay up and available to customers 24 hours a day. So what do you do if your current website host is less than reliable? And how do you find a host that will ensure that your website will stay up and operational? On this show, I'll discuss what to do if you're having problems with your web hosting company and what do look for when you're shopping around for a new one.

1. Always be prepared

• Always have an up to date backup of your website in your possession (HTML pages, images, database backups)
• Keep your domain name registrar separate from your hosting
• Keep all of your login information handy for your domain name and hosting
• Make sure that you are the owner of your domain name

2. Signs that you need to switch hosts

• Your hosting service goes down more than a couple times a month.
• Tech support fails to respond to questions or problems within 24 hours.
• You're consistently having a hard time reaching anyone in tech support.
• You start noticing some of the same complaints from other customers in the tech support message boards.
• Problems with your website are due to changes or limitations with your hosting service (it's possible that your website just outgrows the abilities of your current host).

3. What to look for in a host

• Get some recommendations from friends or colleagues that have a website. Chances are if they've been with their host for a year or more the host is pretty reliable. (I've had good luck with Hostgator and Bluehost for hosting)
• The host has been around for more than a couple of years. Use Whois.org to check how long the service has been active.
• Type "[hostname here] sucks" or "[hostname here] stinks" in Google or another search engine to see what kind of results you get.
• Check out the support area and see if it also includes message boards. Take a look and see what kind of complaints typically crop up. Also check to see what kind of response customers get from tech support.
• Be wary of "unlimited bandwidth", "unlimited space", and 24 x 7 uptime claims. It's really impossible to ensure these claims.
• A basic package that includes features like SQL databases, pre-installed scripts, and plenty of storage should cost between $7 to $20 per month. On average you can get a decent package for about $10 and it will take care of the needs of the average website.

4. Making the switch

• Take your time looking for a new web host. Don't rush because you're frustrated or angry. You may end up leaving one bad host only to sign up with another bad host.
• Don't prepay for hosting for the first couple months. A lot of hosting services gives discounts if you pay 3 months, 6 months or even for the entire year up front. Test the service before you commit for more than a month.
• Don't cut off your old host until everything is up and running at your new host and the DNS for your domain name has been changed properly. Remember that changing the nameserver or DNS information for your domain name take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to be universal across the Internet. If you don't know what DNS is or how to change it you can watch this video on how to change your DNS information.