Welcome to the technical portion of our program. While everyone wants to get right to blogging, you have to know where the website is gonna be stored, right?
There are alot of hosting packages with a variety of price points. It can be overwhelming to find the right one for your affiliate blog. We offer some basic direction when considering hosts.
What features should you look for in a hosting plans?
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
- The ability to create and maintain databases (WordPress requires one and some ad servers require one as well)
- Decent bandwidth (200GB/month transfer)
- Storage (3000MB disk space)
Note: don’t get swayed by a cheap plan. Often these hosts get you in for a few months at an attractive price, only to pile on the charges after reeling you in.
Who are some hosts that we considered?
- Bluehost
- DreamHost
- eleven2
- MediaTemple
- Lunar Pages
- pair Networks – (note: we often refer our clients to this reliable host, yet we are disappointed that they have decided to promote Movable Type blogs.)
What host did we choose for our affiliate blog?
We chose MediaTemple because they were relatively inexpensive and have been reliable and responsive for us in the past (We currently host a couple of our other subdomains on there). They also have a cool feature called “Grid-Service” or on-demand scalability that allows you to always be ready for intense bursts of traffic and a growing audience (because who knows how big you can get?).
What’s next? Back to the fun and design considerations!