Web Hosting Strategy for Managing Multiple Websites
If you are making a comfortable living from the Internet and the
Web or have a plan to achieve that goal, it's likely that you
are running more than ten websites. The websites are your
virtual offices. You want to your sites to be up and running 365
days, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Managing multiple
websites is a daunting task if running one website is a hobby.
Proposed Hosting Strategy for Managing Multiple Websites
The hosting strategy we propose is to host your multiple major
websites with 3-4 different hosting companies, and open a
reseller account with another hosting company for 1) small and
new websites, 2) web development and 3) backup. Hosting with too
many hosting companies will significantly increase the time and
the difficulty of managing sites, and using a single hosting
company isn't a smart choice either.
Justification of the Hosting Strategy
Cost - Cost of the Web hosting isn't an issue for running a
single web site whether it costs $5 or $25 a month. The
difference is only a few hundred dollars or less a year. It's
always nice and smart to get the most out of every single dollar
in doing business. At least, a few hundred dollars difference
wouldn't make or break a business. If you run 10 or even 50
websites, the cost of Web hosting alone will define the success
or failure of your online adventure. To cut the hosting cost,
the option is to use a reseller hosting account to host as many
small or new sites as you want for about $15 a month. You host
one or 2 major websites with one hosting company. Shared hosting
account costs under $10 a month, and dedicated server will cost
$50 or more a month.
Uptime - If your bread-and-butter maker website is down for a
few hours, you'll lose hundreds of dollars and more. Even though
most hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime, it's not common to
see a website down for a few hours. A site could be down for a
half day or even more if a hosting company is doing a major
update. The hosting company may do the update in a weekend or a
major holiday, but that's when many family-oriented and travel
sites generate their revenues. If you could afford the loss of
revenues, many websites owners can't bear the psychological loss
and pressure. Hosting your sites with a few hosting companies
will reduce the risk of downtime.
Application Development - For simple web application, webmasters
will do development on the same production hosting site. If your
ecommerce applications are complex, doing development on the
production site may bring down the live site especially if
you're in the process of changing configuration files or install
customized applications. The option is setup a website on your
reseller account for development and testing, and move the
applications to production account on another server after the
completion.
Backup - If you're not happy with a hosting company, a hosting
company is out of business, or the servers will be down for a
day or two, you can easily temporarily or permanently switch
from one hosting company to other since you're familiar with the
site managing tools already. If you have a backup or secondary
copy running on another server, all you need for the switch is
the transfer of the domain, which will take no more than a
minute.
Shop Before You Buy
There're too many hosting plans to choose from a large number of
hosting companies - ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated
Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With
Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller
Hosting, Sh
ared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers,
Windows Hosting or Co-location Hosting. Compare the cost,
hosting features, tracking records of hosting companies before
making your commitment. Good luck with your online adventures.