Host unlimited blogs, websites for $4.95 only with this web host

Web Hosting for reviews and ratings websites

One thing about a website that will keep users coming back to it time and again is user interactivity. Having a feature on the site where users can rate and comment on content will keep many glued to the site and draw a lot of loyal return visitors. However, the more “sticky” features a site has, the more resources it requires from a web hosting company to run properly. A site such as hotornot.com takes an enormous amount of resources to power its engine and finding hosting for such a site is a difficult task. In this article we will look at the primary concerns of ratings and review sites and some options for hosting such sites.

Ratings and review sites have really only two things to worry about when it comes to hosting. The first is CPU/RAM usage and the second is technical support. If you can find a hosting company that has lenient resource usage policies and fast, knowledgeable technical support, then you have found a good company to host with.
Before we look at why those two things are important, lets explore why space and bandwidth are not really all that important to a ratings and review site. This is important because most hosting companies offer insane amounts of space and bandwidth as a marketing gimmick to attract potential clients. The truth is that 99% of customers will never even come close to using the amount of space and bandwidth advertised without running into other problems first. For instance, lets take Servage for example which offers 360GB space and 3.6TB(3600GB) of bandwidth transfer per month for $6.45/month. With a ratings reviews site(unless you run a video ratings and review site), your average page with images will probably average 50-60k per page. To expect the worst, we will use 100k per page for our calculation. Even if you get 50,000 visitors per day and each user averages 8 pages per user, then the total bandwidth usage per month is .1mb*50000visitors per day * 8 pages per visitors *30 days/month = 1,200,000MB bandwidth of 1.2TB bandwidth per month. So even if your website gets as popular as 50,000 visitors per day, you will only be using 1/3 of your bandwidth allotment by worst-case estimates. However, your account will be suspended long before you hit 50,000 unique visitors per day on a regular shared account for reasons explained below.
The most likely reason your account will be suspended will be because of over-usage of CPU and RAM on a shared account. On a shared account, you are pushed on a server with hundreds if not thousands of other users. Even though a server with a quad-core processor and 4GB DDR2 ram is powerful, the portion each user is allowed to use is very small. If an account suddenly needs to use a large amount of CPU/RAM(if your site get on digg), it runs a good chance of crashing the entire server and shutting off hundreds of clients. If this happens, you account will get suspended or even deleted without your notice by most hosts. The % of CPU/RAM allowed differs from host to host and may be as small as 1% on some of the major oversellers or may be large as 10% on some more expensive higher-quality hosts. How hosts deal with over-usage is also different. Some hosts will suspend you immediately without questions, others will give you a warning before suspending you, and the best will try to work with you to come up with a better solution. No matter which path the host pursues with over-usage, no host will tolerate users that constantly have the danger of crashing the entire server. If you are constantly using a large % of CPU/RAM, its time that you upgrade from a shared hosting solution. Before you sign up with your host, you should talk with on-board staff and carefully read the Terms of Service to be sure of their tolerances on CPU/RAM usage.
The other thing besides CPU/RAM to take into consideration when choosing a host is the quality of technical support. Since a ratings and reviews site runs on a complicated piece of software, it is inevitable that there will be script or database errors somewhere along the line. These problems will cause the site to slow down or even cause the entire site to shut down. When this happens, you will need to good, competent technical support to get your site up and running again. To pass in this category, the hosting company must have an adequate number of technical support people to help its customers, the technical support staff must be competent in at least the basics of server administrations and website troubleshooting, and the support staff have to have short response times and be available 24/7. The best way to find out about the quality of technical support that a hosting company has is to ask other people at a forum such as webhostingtalk.com(for free hosting, check out freewebspace.net). There are thousands of users on such a forum and chances are, someone has had experience with the host you are looking at. You will get a detailed analysis of the host you are thinking of as well as reviews from current and past customers from such a forum. These opinions are generally unbiased and because of that are generally superior to reviews from web hosting review sites.
Now that we have looked at the main requirements of hosting for ratings/review sites, lets take a look at the different hosting models that could suit you.

1. Free hosting - Good free hosts are few and far between and for a ratings/reviews site, I would not count on any free host to run it. CPU/RAM restraints are extremely low on almost all free hosts and since you are not paying them for service, they will suspend your account without notice if it looks like it is causing them trouble. The space and bandwidth given by a free host are usually good enough to start a ratings/review site but the technical support is often lacking or non-existent. If you do go with a free host, go with one that requires you to post to host or requires some kind of ad on your page. While these may be annoying, they give the host something to support itself on. Free hosts that give hosting for absolutely nothing most often don’t stay around for more than a few weeks as they have no financial backing to support themselves. Two free hosts you may want to look at are stonerocket.net and zoomcities.com. Both of these hosts are known for their tech support to their free hosting customers and have dependable servers that they run off of. They are also free hosts that are subsidized by their paid hosting counterparts which means they have pretty good financial backing. When looking for a free host, pick a host thats been around for a while and has a way to maintain itself rather the one that offers the most features.
2. Shared Hosting - A quality shared host is a good start for any kind of site. For a CPU/RAM intensive site like a ratings/review site, you will need to do a good search for a host that is very lenient on CPU/RAM usage rates. Before choosing, you will want to monitor other sites that are running on that host to get an idea if their uptime is good or not. You will also want to inquire carefully to get a good idea of what their technical support is like. On any shared hosting plan, you need to read the Terms of Service agreement carefully for CPU/RAM usage policies and see if the shared host has a clause for a “burst rate” if your site should happen to experience peak hours where traffic is much higher than usual. As this is the reason that most sites get suspended, you will want to make sure that your site can survive such an effect. For a review/ratings site, you will not want to go with a host that offers extreme amounts of space and bandwidth on the cheap such as Ixwebhosting, powweb, Ipowerweb, and the like. You will want a host like gate2vn.net, downtownhost.com, or a likewise host that charges more for less resources but can provide you with the technical support and work with you on CPU/RAM problems.
3. VPS(Virtual Private Hosting) - If you can afford a VPS account right off the bat for a ratings/review site, I suggest that this is the solution you start with. With a managed VPS account, you will never have to worry about account suspensions due to excessive CPU/RAM usage. Unlike shared hosting where users can “borrow” each other’s resources, each account in a VPS is sectioned off by itself and is guaranteed a certain amount of resources. VPS’s of the same grade are usually put on the same server. Each accounts gets equal CPU share and is guaranteed a certain amount of RAM plus a “burst RAM” rate for peak hours. In this environment, no one account can use the resources of the entire server so no one account can cause the entire server to crash. A small managed VPS with around 128 guaranteed RAM and a control panel can be purchased for around $35/month. This may not seem like a lot of resources but when compared to the resources you are given on a normal shared account, it is still a big improvement. When your site gets more popular and 128mb RAM is not sufficient anymore for your hosting needs, you can always ask the host to upgrade your VPS plan. Another benefit of the VPS, and the reason why many switch to a VPS, is for control. In a VPS setup, you also have full root access into your portion of the server so you can run root-level commands and statistics. Having a VPS gives you far more control over your hosting environment than a shared plan so you can set up more options should you need them.
4. Dedicated server - If your ratings/reviews site gets really popular and outgrows a high-level VPS, you will want to upgrade to a managed dedicated server. In this environment, the entire server belongs to you so you never have to worry about being suspended for resource usage. A dedicated server is much like a VPS plan except bigger and more powerful. It provides you with a few extra options such as true root access, the ability to partition drives, and a few other administrative tasks that a VPS does not have. You will want to buy a dedicated server with an administration panel such as Cpanel or DirectAdmin to help you take care of day-to-day tasks. To truly upgrade from a VPS, you will need to buy at least a server with a dual-core processor and 1 GB ram. If your site is outgrowing the high-end VPS, a server with this spec is needed in order to keep up with demands. If you feel like you are outgrowing your server, you can always upgrade to a better one or put more hardware into the one you have. Dedicated server sgo from Celerons to dual and quad Conroe setups, so there is always plenty of room for expansion. If your purchasing a dedicated server, you’ll want a company who has technical support that can answer questions within a hour. Such companies that can offer this are wiredtree and rackspace. Servers from these places are a bit more costly than most but the service is well worth the few extra bucks.

In this article we have looked at the requirements of ratings and review sites as well as the hosting options to satisfy those needs. While I recommend starting on a small VPS, a quality shared hosting account will suit many well when they first start. However be sure to do careful research before buying any plan. The extra time you spend planning and researching will save you days of headaches later on.

This web hosting blog is proudly hosted with reliable Hostgator webhosting for only one cents through this hostgator coupon