Choosing the right web host for your forum can be quite a frustrating experience. If you go by the advertisements, most hosts would appear to be good for your particular needs. But there have been cases where web host have started out by providing great service, only to get mired later - overselling the shared servers, providing low service quality, not responding to problems promptly, etc. Such experiences lead to a renewed search for a new host yet again.

Finding reliable in formation before you make a decision can benefit you greatly. The following advice will hopefully help you find the right host for all your needs.

What you need to know about web hosting

An online presence has never been more important and this makes having the right web host vital as a poor choice can ruin some sites. There are many reasons that will impact on your choice such as selling items on your site, having an individual site or passing data efficiently amongst work colleagues around the globe. Making the right choice is very important and price and value can't be your only choices, you need to evaluate quality and links and connections too.

Given you now know the basics, there are techniques and strategies people can follow to find the best host for their needs.

Here you'll find a list of Web Hosting Companies that can help you with your forum hosting. The following companies run forums on their servers and have been known to do so economically and efficiently.

Some of the top web host firms that offer Forum support

1. Hostgator - www.hostgator.com

2. Hostpapa - www.hostpapa.com

3. Hostmonster - www.hostmonster.com

4. ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com

5. ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com

6. Powweb - www.powweb.com

7. ServerPronto - www.serverpronto.com

8. Bluehost - www.bluehost.com

Although this is a filtered list of top sites, there may still be questions you need answers to make the best decision. These would be based around your own needs for things like storage room or the amount of bandwidth you require.

If you want to host a forum, you will need round about 50 GB bandwidth per month and on average, 10 GB of space to store items. These figures are a general example and the needs of your website may differ. If the website you run does not have many images, you may not need a lot of space. However, if your site had a large number of graphics, the opposite would be the case. The host you choose should be able to provide you with information about what you require.

Aim for stability

It can be hellish moving your site between different hosts and downtime, data losses and various problems can occur making life hard for your business. This makes being stable something to aim for that is vital when having a web host provision. It can help to find an established provider which means you need to talk to past customers and see if they received good service. If they had bad experiences so might you, so why take the risk? A little research can make a big difference.

Price

This is of course a deciding factor for a number of people. How much money you need to pay primarily depends on your storage space and bandwidth requirements. Hosting is usually sold in packages based on a combination of these three options:

Virtual Private Server

Shared Hosting

Dedicated Hosting

The size of your budget and forum will impact on your choice.

Some of these options are discussed in more depth here:

Shared Hosting - In this option, the server is owned by the web host and is rented out in parts to a number of people. This is the most economical option if budget is your primary concern. But your performance may suffer since the various sites on the server keep competing for the server's resources on a continuous basis. This may result in your site running slow and you may also suffer outages.

Dedicated Hosting - Having a dedicated server, on the other hand, gives you the best performance at a high cost. Since only your own site is present on the server, there is no competition for server resources. But this requires you to have a good knowledge about managing servers. Else, you can pay a third party to manage your server for you. You have the choice of either taking the server on rent or buying it outright.

Virtual Private Server - this is like a combination of the two options above. Although you share a Virtual Private Server (VPS), the server resources are divided up in such a manner that you get dedicated resources and do not have to compete for them continuously. This option gives you the best of both worlds.

Service

When looking for the best provider to host your forum you need to be aware of quality service and high level technical assistance. This should be provided by the best host providers. It can be simple to select a host to that is popular because if other users recommend the site, it must have some qualities. However, a popular site is a busy site and this may place extra strain on its resources. A lot of clients can be a bad thing when examining which host to work with.

Always find out what level of support is on offer from your host. Perhaps you can find existing or previous clients for an opinion on the firm. The following questions may help you make a better choice.

Will they provide a speedy solution to problems?

Can they offer quality solutions?

Are the technicians always on call?

What is the support policy on holidays and after work hours?

How responsive are they on email?

Do they fix your solution or do they offer excuse after excuse?

Solutions offered to these questions will give you a better idea of what host is right for you.

Conclusion

Searching for a good web hosting provider can be quite a daunting task, but the above guide will help you in your efforts considerably. Just remember one thing - choosing a web hosting provider is like getting married divorce is a messy affair you'd rather not go through! Look around, do your research well, and then take a final decision after weighing all the pros and cons.