Quality Hosting for a Blog
Lorelle helps you learn more about Word Press and blogging via her Word Press blog. But while Lorelle knows blogging, she doesn’t know web hosting.
In her I hate my web host blog entry, she pleads for a recommendation and so far, she’s gotten approximately 80 replies, many of which are either thinly veiled affiliate links or blatantly obvious affiliate links. (eg: buyhostgator.com which redirects to the affiliate link with the end provider of the hosting service.)
Oh, and one comment suggesting that she take the BIG leap to dedicated hosting. It makes me laugh.Moving from a "typical" hosting solution to a dedicated one is very similar to making the switch from driving a sports coupe to an 18 wheeler…. both may travel the same roads, but the 18 wheeler requires a lot more skill and dedication than driving a traditional 4-wheeler. In that guy’s defense, he’s not recommending his affiliate link be used, but me thinks he doesn’t recognize that which comes easily to him doesn’t come easily to all web dwellers.
Blogging is easy.
Finding quality hosting is hard.
Finding quality hosting with great customer support…priceless.
Finding quality hosting with great customer support for people who REALLY don’t understand this whole "computer" thing let alone internet thing…. nearly impossible…with good reason.
I spent 2 hours a few weeks ago on the phone with someone who had purchased an "easy" web site from Acumen Web Services. We spent 1 hour of the 2 hours allotted trying to get his email set up. The problem was on his end, as I was accessing his account’s email settings with ease using the same program. Throughout the process, I struggled along as he made really simple errors which totally mucked up Outlook’s ability to access his email account. (example: mail.domainname.com is an entirely different animal than mail.domain name.com)
This client paid for 2 hours of my time to help him through such struggles. If he had purchased his hosting account "directly" he wouldn’t have received such support. How can a hosting provider, who provides space for a web site for as little as $2 per month AFFORD to provide such support? They can’t and they don’t. But it never ceases to amaze me at how many small business owners expect such hand holding to be provided at no charge.
As for the client mentioned above, I would have MUCH rather provided insight as to how to structure his catetories to take full advantage of the search engine savvy properties of his blog. However, he like many others found the written tutorial wasn’t enough. So, he used his two hours being educated on how to set up email in Outlook. How a computer doesn’t see an empty space, it sees a character that is invisible to the reader of the document, and how copying and pasting from a word processor into the blog can have disasterous consequences for the appearance of the post.
Reflecting on that experience, and then reading Lorelle’s post reminds me that there are those who do and those who teach. What separates the successful from the unssuccessful is recognizing that while information may yearn to be "free"….. that interpretation of that knowledge is a valuable commodity.
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