1. Keep backups of everything. Even if you have already made it clear to clients and users that the server will soon be gone, you should still keep backups around for a while, just in case.

2. Announce the shutdown well in advance. Do not wait until a few days before such a major change. Give anyone else involved time to prepare.

3. If you are migrating to a new server, have everything set up on the new server before you pull the plug on the old one. There should be minimal downtime.

4. Help customers adjust. If you were running some type of reseller or hosting business, refer your customers to another good host and help them move their sites. You never know when you may want to do business with those customers again.

5. If your website was particularly valuable in terms of content, consider selling it intact or passing off the content to someone who may want to use it and preserve it.

6. Keep or sell your domains. If they were at all valuable to you, they might be valuable to someone else or to you in the future. Do not just let them expire.

7. If you know of any places that recommended your site or advertised for you, make sure to notify them that you are closing.

8. Accept that change is part of life and move on with your life.

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1. Always use a remote backup server. Although there are some benefits to local backup, it will be useless when the entire server crashes.

2. If possible, avoid using your home computer as your backup server. Use a dedicated backup server or lease backup space from a web host.

3. Use rsync or similar program to perform remote incremental backups.

4. Automate the backup process with a cron job.

5. Backup all website files and databases.

6. Periodically test your backups to make sure the process completed correctly.

7. Make sure users or clients also perform their own individual backups for added protection.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

For most small business websites, shared hosting is more than adequate. If you have a simple HTML site and don’t plan on receiving much traffic, you should not pay more than £7 a month for a hosting plan.

If your site uses a content management system (CMS) or has a lot of Flash content, a VPS would be a good investment if you will receive more than 400 visitors per day. Busier sites might need a dedicated server.

There are many hosting providers out there that offer “business web hosting,” but any web host will work just fine. Just make sure you are comfortable with the level of support offered. Medium and large businesses often host sites in-house.

There are many customer management tools on the market, but not all of them are catered to web hosting. In particular, the best way to make sure payments are received on time is to have some type of recurring billing setup. Hosting is usually relatively inexpensive, and most customers will not mind having a small amount deducted from their credit cards or PayPal accounts each month.

The other important aspect of customer management is communication. Keep in regular contact with your customers. Many conflicts that happen when dealing with people online are the result of misunderstandings. With email, social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook, and your website’s blog, you can stay in contact with your customers without being overly invasive. Welcome to the world of web hosting, and good luck.

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One strand of thinking would say that there is really no reason to bother with such formalities on a small website and that only big businesses that collect a lot of user data need to be concerned with it. On the other hand, many small websites still collect user data, particularly small online stores, and those stores are as vulnerable to lawsuits as any major corporation.

There are many websites and free services that offer privacy policy generators and terms of service templates. If for no other reason, having those statements on your website provides clarify if a user is ever unsure about your purpose and what you do with their information.

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1. If a vendor makes you custom database software and then goes out of business, what happens to your data?
2. If a vendor’s cloud computing infrastructure breaks down, what happens to your data?
3. If later on down the road, you want to transfer your databases to something more standard, will you lose data in the conversion?

The answer to all three is that some or all of your data could go up in smoke. That is why more businesses, even large ones are opting for free and open source solutions like MySQL or PostgreSQL. You can still hire someone to set it up and manage it, but when that company fades away, your data is still safe. Even if you opt for a cloud solution, having access to your open source databases means that you can pull them at any time and move them to another server with minimal data loss.

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Typical TOS documents will include portions about the types of sites a web host will allow. For example, if you intend to host an adult site, it might behoove you to make sure the web hosting provider you are choosing will allow adult content. It has less to do with censorship than with security and excessive bandwidth and memory requirements of adult sites.

Other issues to consider are policies on mass email marketing (spamming), outage compensation, gaming, file sharing, and copyright. The last thing you want is to invest time and money into a project only to have the rug pulled out from under it by your web host. If you have any doubts, contact them ahead of time and confirm that your site will be permitted on their server, and always read the fine print.

Answer: Reseller hosting is when a web hosting provider sells you a number of bulk hosting accounts that you can then turn around and market to your own customers for profit. It differs from a dedicated hosting in account in that the reseller does not have to manage the server or the account. They only manage the business side of the transactions.

This type of setup is ideal for those who do not have the time and manpower to run a full web hosting company but still have the business savvy to close hosting deals in a competitive market. Most web hosts offer reseller packages that vary according to number of accounts, hosting space, and/or bandwidth.

With dedicated server hosting, the web hosting provider leases full servers to clients, and those clients turn around and either host a single large website or several shared hosting accounts, acting as an independent web hosting company of its own. In this situation, the servers are often unmanaged, with the hosting providers only responsible for the data center security and maintenance.

Photo Source: SXC

1. Do you need a website? This seems like an obvious question, but some people struggle with it, not realizing the problem. For some, getting a blog with a free blogging service is enough and more convenient. Also, just because you have an offline slug collecting club does not mean that you need a website. Evaluate your intended audience and examine all the free options before getting a domain and hosting account.

2. Who will maintain the site? This is a big one. Make sure you know exactly what you are getting into when you hire someone to make a site for you. Will you be responsible for updating it? Do you want that responsibility? Is the designer installing a content management system for easy updating, or do they expect you to pay them every time it needs work? Web design does not mean website maintenance.

3. Who are the site and content owners? Typically, ownership of the site content always belongs to you, but make sure you read the fine print. As for the domain and site itself, make sure all of that is in your name and under your control.

4. Price. This one goes without saying. While the U.S. government will happily pay $18 million for a website, you should not.

Take all of these points into consideration and anything else you can think of before you sign on the dotted line. Do not assume that you need professional web design simply because the option is available.

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1. SSL: If you are going to conduct secure transactions that includes credit cards and/or personal information about your clients or customers, you need to get a web hosting account that offers either shared SSL or a unique IP address with SSL.

2. Shopping Cart: Good web hosts will offer you either an open source shopping cart option to easily install or their own custom shopping cart software.

3. Payment gateway: You can have the best products or services, but without a payment gateway, you will not make sales. People who shop online expect to pay online. PayPal is a popular option, but it is good to have an alternative as well, since some customers will not want to use it.

4. Multiple domain names: Chances are, your customers will type a “.com” when they should have typed “.net”. It is a good idea to at least cover some of the big top-level domains.

5. Website Copywriter: You may think you know the best way to describe your business, but that does not mean it is the most appealing to customers and search engines. Hire someone who specializes in writing website copy. There are plenty of freelance writers out there willing to write everything for your website at affordable prices.

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