More on Web Hosts

If you are like me, you are often asked for computer related advice when you are just about anywhere. As soon as someone finds out you work in the technology area, you are almost like a Doctor who is asked for free advice about aches and pains at parties, on the golf course, dinner parties or wherever. Recently, I was asked to recommend a web host "as long as it is local". My question to him was "why does that matter" and I got one of those looks. You know the ones I am talking about. So let's think about the question a bit. Does it matter if you host a web site with a company in your local area? Oftentimes people don't know it but local ISPs are sometimes just re-selling a hosting service. They may take some of the work out of setting up a domain and web site, but chances are the actual servers are not at their facility anyway. Anyone, just about, can become a web hosting reseller. They pay for web hosting services with a company that may be out of state or even out of country. It doesn't really matter. These resellers turn around and put themselves in the web hosting business charging more than they are paying their web hosting company and Voila, they make money.

Now a more important question is not is the web host local, but where are the web servers located? What is the data center like and what are the servers that are hosting the web sites? Here is a really good question: how many web sites are hosted on each server? A lot of people will choose a web host solely on price without considering things which might affect performance. Other people will choose web site hosting because it is a "name they know". For example, Yahoo! offers a lot of services and people are often familiar with the name because they may use the Yahoo web search engine or may have a free email account with them. Don't get me wrong: for a lot of people a site hosted with Yahoo Web Hosting may be the ideal solution. They are not a local web host but for many people that doesn't matter and if they don't want someone to design a web site for them, they may find the Yahoo! Site Builder is more than adequate.

I think a lot of times people really don't care if the web server is "local" or not, but they want to know they can walk into an office somewhere and talk to a person "face to face" about their web site needs, designs or etcetera. They don't want to learn to design, publish or FTP a web site they just want to have a web site for their business cards. These type of people are the ones who may gladly pay a few hundred dollars for a static web site with some nice graphics. All too often people spend a lot of money (and others spend a lot of time) without really thinking about what they want to achieve with a web site.

There are two words that are similar but mean different things: Effective and Efficient. Efficient means do things the right way, while Effective means doing the right thing. You can be very efficient at setting up a web page and it can look great but is it an effective web site. I have a neighbor who is in the real estate business. He had someone design a graphic of himself dressed up as Santa Claus and riding on a sleigh over house tops waving his hand. He knew one of my two sons is pretty good at graphic design so he asked him to help jazz up this graphic on the web site. My son did what he wanted and used a little flash animation do make his hand "wave" and to make Rudolph's red nose blink. Now the end result looked pretty good and was "cute" but do you think this change did either of the following:

1) Attracted more visitors to the web site?

2) Helped make a sale?

I am pretty confident in saying the answer to both questions would be "No".

I guess my point is that web site hosting can be an important decision, but it depends on a lot of things and whether or not the web site is hosted "locally" is one of the least important questions. Ask the right questions as you evaluate your web hosting needs.