Happy Hump Day, folks! Yep, it’s Bloggie Wednesdays again 🙂

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been having a lot of problems with my webhost for the past few months. In short, they complained that my website’s CPU usage was high and was affecting the shared server environment. They’ve disabled scripts that practically rendered my blog useless and inacessible, they’ve blocked my own IP address which made everyone able to access my blog but me, they’ve offered advice that caused my blog’s SEO to tank on Google and other search engines.

In short, it was a bloody nightmare. What made it worse was that I actually recommended them so highly to other bloggers, and one even signed up with them because of my recommendation. Guess what? A few months after I started experiencing issues with the old webhost, she was hit with the same problem too. She has since switched webhosts, but I’m still feeling bad about it today. 🙁

I switched to another webhost a couple of weeks ago, and prior to the switch, I’ve been asking around, on which webhost other bloggers are using, and why they chose it. After plenty of research and hair-tearing moments, I finally transferred to a popular webhost that a majority of the beauty bloggers are on. All the problems I had with my old webhost were eliminated.

If you’re planning to jump on the self-hosted platform bandwagon, here are a few tips which might help you avoid the problems I had.

• Do plenty of research before you purchase. Ask around, check with your fellow bloggers on the webhosts they’re using, why they’re using it, and if they experienced any problems with the host.
• When you’re doing the research, check with popular blogs that have high traffic coming in. What webhosts are they using? Which package? Does the host support the amount of traffic they’re getting? I say this because your blogs have the potential to grow, and you will want the host and package to be able to support the traffic spike.
• Beware when hosting packages use the words “unlimited”. A lot of big hosting companies offer “unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space”, which makes you think, wow, that’s a good deal. Nothing is ever unlimited. I learned that by experience. Contact them prior to purchase to clarify what they mean by “unlimited”. More often than not, there’s a cap somewhere.
• When you finally do purchase a suitable hosting package from the webhost, just buy 1 year. I know that if you purchase in bulk, it’s cheaper. However, as you’ve never done this before, you’ll want to test the waters with the webhost first. If after a year, things are still smooth-sailing, by all means purchase 2-3 years when you renew. If not, then at least you don’t lose much money.
• Research their customer service. This is very important. If anything goes wrong with your blog, you’d want to be able to get hold of them as soon as possible to resolve any issues you might be having. Check for reviews on their level of customer service. See if the hosting company’s on Twitter. I find that people respond a lot quicker on Twitter than via email. 😛
• Don’t be afraid to politely question their suggestions if you’re not sure if they’re correct. Again, ask around first if anyone else is experiencing similar problems. If the answers you get do not match the webhost’s suggested solutions, ask the hosting company to clarify. My blog’s traffic is no way as high as many popular blogs out there, but my old webhost kept insisting that I purchase a dedicated server for my high CPU usage problems when it was completely unnecessary. I told them, politely but firmly, that a dedicated server was not an option.

These are some suggestions for you if you’re deciding on which hosting company you’d like your blog(s) to go with. If you have any tips and suggestions which may help us, please feel free to let us know in the comments.

The right webhost can do heaps for you, and you can have a beautiful friendship with them for years. The wrong ones can give you worry lines on your face and you definitely do not want that. 😛