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A couple of days ago, my hosting service went down and The Crafted Webmaster was unavailable all evening. Because I also have a couple of my other websites hosted on the same service that meant that those sites were down as well. While outages like this can be frustrating, in most cases they’re not all that serious, and if your web host is reliable, these incidences are rare. My hosting service kept everyone updated as to what the problem was and they managed to get things back up and running as soon as possible.

But what if your hosting service seems to have problems like this all the time? You should start getting worried if:

  • Your hosting service goes down more than a couple times a month
  • You’re consistently having a hard time reaching anyone in tech support
  • Tech support fails to respond to questions or problems within 24 hours
  • You start noticing some of the same complaints from other customers in the tech support message boards.
  • Problems with your website are due to changes or limitations with your hosting service (it’s possible that your website just outgrows the abilities of your current host)

So what to do? Well in some cases, the problems are just temporary and they’ll even out. In other cases, it may be time to find a new web host. If you do find that you need to get a new web host, here are some tips that can make the transition easier.

  • Make a backup of your website as soon as possible. This includes all of your web pages, graphics, and any software installations like Wordpress blogs, shopping carts and any databases that goes with them. If your web host uses cPanel for website administration, this is pretty easy. If you don’t know how, get someone to help you. (and once you’re settled on your new host, make it a practice to back up your site regularly)
  • Take your time looking for a new web host. Don’t rush this because you’re frustrated or angry because you don’t want to leave one bad host only to sign up with another bad one.
  • Get some recommendations. If you know of someone else who has a website, ask them who they use. Chances are if they’ve been with their host for a year or more the host is pretty reliable.
  • If you got your domain name at the same place where you’re hosting your site, seriously consider transferring it to another registrar before you move your website, like My Namespot or any of the other domain registrars out there.
  • Don’t prepay for hosting…at least not for the first couple months. A lot of hosting services gives discounts if you pay 3 months, 6 months or even for the entire year up front. While it’s tempting to save money by getting a yearly contract, I usually recommend that you pay month to month at the beginning. That way if the service starts to head south, you’re only obligated for a month. Once the service has proven itself, you can try switching payment plans if you wish.
  • Don’t cut off your old host until everything is up and running at your new host and the DNS for your domain name has been changed properly. Remember that changing the nameserver or DNS information for your domain name take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to be universal across the Internet. So keep that in mind when you’re switching to your web host. If you don’t know what DNS is or how to change it, check out the video below.

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