mitrobeMY EXPERIENCE WITH A BAD HOST & HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD WEB HOST – ZIGIHOW.COM.NG
Garanntor has been my web host provider for 2 years, and during the days when my website was hosted on their sever, my website has always been online, (though I experienced downtime twice), but didn’t last for long, I enjoyed their services, (cheap hosting plan and domain). Not until on August when I had a very terrible experience with them. In this article, I’m going to detail out my experience with a bad host.
It all started on August 30th, 2019, exactly 12pm in the afternoon, I was really a bad experience. I decided to check on my blog (as usual), and behold my blog wasn’t accessible. At first I thought cloudflare servers were down, because my namesevers were pointed to cloudflare. When I did my investigation, I knew it wasn’t from cloudflare, that was when I knew the problem was from my web hosting provider.
With immediate effect, I tried to contact them online, through the online tech support, and to my greatest suprise their website wasn’t reachable either (can you imagine). Then I called them on phone. And they picked up.
Below was our conversation.
- Me: Good afternoon
- Hosting provider: Good afternoon sir
- Me: My website is not reachable, what could be the problem.
- Hosting provider: Sorry for the inconveniences sir, we are fully aware of the situation on ground, we are doing our very best to rectify the issue and in no distant time your website should be up and running.
- Me: Ok, thank you very much, I’ll be waiting.
I hung up.
I had to exercise some patience and wait for the issue to get rectified, because I really need to use my blog (publish an article)
After 5 hours, my website was still offline, (I was beginning to loose patience)
I called again.
- Me: Hello, my website is still not reachable for 5 hours now.
- Hosting provider: Sir we are still working on it, please do exercise some patience with us.
- Me: But I really need to do some work on my website, I can’t keep waiting.
- Hosting provider: Don’t worry sir, we assure you the issue will be resolved, and your website will be back online soon.
- Me: Ok, I hung up.
I was bothered, because I know how downtime can affect a website’s SEO, but I had to give them some time to resolve the issue.
After 3 hours, exactly 8:25, I called again, this time around, I lost it totally, I couldn’t hold my anger.
They were still repeating the same thing, “I should give them time, that the issue will be resolved, they are working hard to resolve the issue”.
Till the next day, could you believe my website was still offline. (Non reachable).
I had to create a short article on nairaland, asking if there was anyone else facing a downtime issue with Garanntor.ng
That was when I knew I was not the only one, you can read the conversation yourself.
After, 2 days, my website started coming on and off (online and offline). It comes online now, after 2 hours, it goes offline, and loads very slow. Each time I call them to know the latest development, they keep telling me the technical support are still working on it.
Believe me, I had enough patience with them, but I can’t stand the feeling knowing my website was offline.
After 5 days of downtime, this was when i made up my mind to change web host.
I migrated to Qservers web hosting and since then till date, I have never experienced downtime. I shall make a review about them, but that should be in another article.
My Advice
Be careful while choosing a host for your website/blog. Because when this mistake is done it can hurt your blog alot.
My downtime experience with garanntor.ng was very bad.
Garanntor had downtime from 30th till 5th of August. My website was offline for 5 good days.
Just imagine your website being offline for 5days, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Pls be very careful before choosing a web host, before you choose a web host provider ensure to ask people who already hosted their website on the host, to know their experience before you go ahead to choose.
Like they say, experience is the best teacher, with this little but terrible experience of mine, I have come to know some certain things one should really consider before choosing a web hosting provider of their choice.
Guide On How To Choose A Good Web Host.
Choosing a good web host goes down to four main important things. speed, support security and uptime. These four things are what you should consider before choosing a web hosting provider.
Support.
Not everyone is technically knowledgeable to fix some technical difficulties on their blog when it comes up, this is when you will need the support of your web hosting provider. Though not all issues requires the assistance of your web hosting provider, some issues are meant to be fixed by you, or you employ the services of a professional.
The fast response of your host provider is very important especially during emergencies, such as hackers attack. One of the features that determines a good host is good online support and fast response.
Take for instance, web hosts like Qservers and namecheap are known for their quick response to mails and dedication to help their customers get issues fixed with immediate effect.
Speed.
A good web hosting provider comes with a good speed performance, with the speed rate of 1-2 seconds. When my blog was hosted on my previous host, my blog’s speed rate was 10-11 seconds, but now that I have migrated to a new host, it has decreased to 2 seconds, which is very, good.
Fast loading website creates good impression for users. If your website loads fast, you’ve instantly made a strong first impression. It’s a quick-win for user experience! If it loads fast, your new visitor is immediately happy.
Your blog or website speed rate really matters, a blog with a fast load rate encourages good SEO, search engine ranking factor, and good users experience, no one wants to visit a blog that loads very slow, it pisses users off.
A slow website, makes users think it’s unsafe, insecure, and untrustworthy. And it’s really difficult to turn around that negative first impression.
Uptime
It’s very vital to keep your website online always, but the question is, does every web hosting provider guarantees that?. Every good web host ensures to keep their customers website online 24/7. And if there should be any cause of downtime, they do inform their customers days before it’s occurrence.
Why is uptime so important?
Take for instance you have a shop and when your customer comes to your shop to purchase an item and it was locked, what happens? You loose the revenue from the customer. This is exactly what happens to your website too, when a user tries to visit your website but it’s unreachable you just lost a user.
If you run an ecommerce website store, (an online shopping website) downtime is the last thing you would want to experience, because you’ll loose alot of sales.
A website that is always online and reachable, satisfies users, guarantees saftey, better SEO ranking, no lost of revenue, no wasted of time, and customer trust and loyalty. All you need is a decent and good hosting provider company.
Security.
Security is one of the most important and most vital feature every good hosting plan must provide for their customers to ensure their websites are safe from hacker’s and malware’s attack.
A good web hosting provider provides her clients with full security potentials. Such as:
- Network Monitoring
- SSL and Firewall
- DDoS Prevention
- Antivirus Malware Detection and Removal
- Password and User Access
- Backups
- File Management
- Applications and Logins
- Passwords and User Access
Network Monitoring
A web hosting company should regularly monitor the network for intrusions irregularities and unauthorized activity. This helps prevent server or other related issues from eventually growing into a bigger problem
SSL and Firewall
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption ensures that sensitive data flowing through a website is kept secure and private. However, ssl and firewall secures the communication between a website and a user, it does not necessarily secure the server from a cyber attack.
A WAF (Web Application Firewall) is required to monitor HTTP traffic flowing through web applications. Unlike a network firewall, a WAF provides more specific security because it understands the specific requirements of a web application.
DDoS Prevention
A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a simple, popular and the most used, yet effective cyber attack that can plague popular websites.
Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks happen when an overwhelming amount of traffic is sent to your site, rendering it useless to visitors. Prevention starts at the edge of the network with a good firewall. However, there are limits to how well a firewall stops DDoS attacks.
DDoS is hard to handle when it’s already occurring. Therefore, the best solution will always be for a web host to take precautions against DDoS attacks before they happen. They should also have the proper tools to mitigate DDoS attacks when they do occur. This will only happen when you have a good web hosting provider.
Antivirus Malware Detection and Removal
A good web hosts informs customers of the protective actions each party must respectively perform to secure the website. Regular file scans should be performed on customers accounts who should then be allowed to see the reports.
A good hosting company support plan should also include help in identifying and removing malware. Software like ClamVnet and rkhunter can be installed to keep malware out a host server
Password and User Access.
At some level in your website, you will have passwords for people who administer the site, guest authors, and potentially website visitors, depending on the nature of the site. Establish and enforce password strength policies for everyone who has backend access.
Admin staff and guest authors will need a stronger password because their accounts have potentially greater impact on your site. Enforce changes after any suspected hacking attempt or when updating the content management system (CMS) or other software.
Backups
Backup is one of the best security feature a good host can ever provide. People often overlook backups as an element of security. Backups both provide and require security.
A good web host backs up your files on daily basis, the backedup file must be kept in a secure location away from the main server, following the other security steps we will outline. A secure backup provides a trusted repository for the latest copies of the system and data that can be deployed to restore a known, clean system to operation.
File Management
All access to your server is remote. No one will go to the server to add, remove, or move website content files. You should use secure FTP (SFTP) with a secure and robust password for all file transfer and maintenance while also following other FTP and SFTP best practices.
Applications and Logins
A good hosting company should have a strict password policy for employees with mandatory password changes at regular intervals as well as when equipment or personnel changes.
In Conclusion.
A good web host is all you need to get these features. This is why it’s very important you should be very careful before choosing a web host, make your research and ask questions besed on the reputability of the web hosting company before choosing.
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