I am curious why people say the host make a big difference. I mean, all the viewers can see is YOUR DOMAIN and YOUR CONTENT. I check out my friends website, and until she told me who the host is, there was no way to tell... She upload her html, css, and javascript, and that was all... So why is choosing a host so important???
Responses (1)
For me, the biggest consideration when choosing a host is how they run their servers. If you pile every website onto one server, you save money on servers and thus make more profit. However, all the websites run more slowly and sometimes you get time-outs which doesn't give a good impression to people browsing your site.
There's a trade-off between profit and performance and I would always choose a company that doesn't sacrifice too much in terms of performance. I've had web hosting with dozens of different companies and it's been a problem time and time again.
If you have standard HTML, CSS, JavaScript (which runs on the client side anyway), this doesn't put much load on a server. If you have scripted pages, though, it can do. Ideally a web hosting company should have separate hosting for HTML only and for PHP, ASP, .NET (which all have slightly different requirements). So very few hosting companies do this, though.
Aside from all this, your requirements should drive your choice of hosting. I mean, requirements like:
Security (IP restriction for intranets, roles, groups)
Spam handling
Leech protection
Email management / MX records / Webmail
Domain handling / DNS edits / sub-domains
Scripting (PHP / ASP / .NET)
Databases (MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL)
Optimisation
Cron jobs
Frontpage Extensions
Blogging (Wordpress, etc)
Credit card transactions
Shopping carts (OpenCart, PrestaShop)
Predefined CSS templates
Content Management System (Joomla, Drupal)
Forums (phpBB)
Online Community Management (Dolphin, SMF)
Billing
eCommerce
Galleries
Download area
You may not realise you have a requirement for any, some or all of the above but it's worthwhile working out where your site is going to be in a few years and choose a hosting company that you can handle it, as opposed to keep changing hosting, having downtime, etc...
Hope this helps!