How to Start Your Own Hosting Services
If your like many another webmasters you might be thinking of
starting a web hosting company. But where do you start? And more
importantly, what do you need to know? Well, in this article I
will show the basic things that you will need in order to
succeed as a web hosting provider.
Before you start make sure this is something that you have the
knowledge to do and not just from reading books, but where you
have worked on them. Running servers may sound easy, but it's
far from easy, in fact, even people experienced with servers
will have trouble with them from time to time. You will have to
deal with security threats, downtime and fixing program errors.
Starting your own hosting services is going to be challenging
and frustrating. One option to think about is reseller hosting
plans. There are several good web hosting companies out there
that offer reseller hosting, but at the same time allowing you
to get paid, but without you having to spend your time
maintaining servers. You may want to start out this way to get a
customer base going.
You can rent, lease or buy your servers, If you decide to buy
the servers, get them custom made to your exact needs, if you
have the money, if you can't try to get a server that best fits
into your plans. You'll need a place to keep the servers. You
can find local building to do this or you could keep them at
home. If you keep it at home, you'll need to make sure
everything is just right for them.
Now, which operating system (Windows, Unix, etc.), control panel
(Cpanel, Plesk, etc.), security are you going to choose. Each of
these should be researched with care, check to see if they fit
your needs or not. Also you must consider that some programming
languages can only run on certain operating systems, most web
site owners want programming languages such as PHP or PERL.
You'll need to keep your servers up to date with the latest
security patches. You'll need a good firewall, the firewall is
first defense you have and may be your best. It's essential to
monitor the servers all the time for any errors, hackers or
virus, one slip-up can cause all your servers to be hacked into
and then all your customers will be leaving.
To get the highest possible server uptime you'll need multiple
Internet connections. Depending on the area which you reside in,
it may be hard to find a Internet connection provider. You will
need a fixed IP address, that won't change after each use. Some
providers won't offer this, so make sure you check before you
choose.
How much are you going to charge for your web hosting services?
If the price is to high people will leave, but if the price is
to low people may think your servers are overcrowd with another
web sites and that you offer terrible services. What plans will
you offer? Shared, reseller or dedicated hosting or maybe all of
them.
When you really think about it, it's a lot harder then it seems
on the surface. Your best choose may be to go with a reseller
hosting plan, this will at least give you taste of what you need
to do and help build a customer database.