While it’s true you can get website hosting for $5 a month (sometimes less), just because you can doesn’t mean you should. In the following video, taken from the 1st OpenCamp Meet Up, John P. explains the different types of website hosting, the costs associated, and the good and bad of the different options.

Web hosting is one of the single most essential aspects of running a website and is truly the foundation upon which your site sits. If you’re running a business or planning to make money from your site, you need to give careful consideration to what type of hosting best fits your situation. A few things to think about are:

• How capable are you of maintaining a web server yourself (hint: most of you don’t want to do maintenance yourself)?
• What will your budget allow?
• How much traffic do you expect to get?
• Does your site/hosting need to scale?
• What will the ramifications be of your site going down? Will it affect your business, your revenue?

In the following video, John P. will help you get past the techie-talk (VPS, Virtual Machine, Dedicated Server, Shared hosting) and understand the differences, pros and cons of the various hosting options. It’s not a short video but it’s well worth your time.

Demystifying Web Hosting | John P | OpenCa.mp from dave curlee on Vimeo.

Notes:

• Shared hosting means you are on a box with literally thousands of other websites, what do you think happens to everyone else if one site get’s really busy?
• Google gives consideration to how fast your server is, how fast it responds & how fast your site loads into the equation of how much traffic to send you. The faster and more capable your server the more traffic google will send you.
• VPS (Virtual Private Server) and Virtual Machines are “in-between” options that can save you money and allow you to scale.

I work with clients all the time that focus intently on aesthetic details while completely ignoring their content (hint, content is far more important), their online marketing strategy, etc…

Hire a designer, and let them obsess over aesthetics. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay attention, just don’t let the wrong details consume your time. Now…

5 Things To Stopy Obsessing Over On Your Website

1. Aesthetics: I won’t say aesthetics don’t matter at all, but don’t go overboard with flashy elements or seeking “perfection,” it’s a losers game. Let you designer do what they do so you can get on with building your business as fast as possible. There is little evidence, if any, that an aesthetically perfect webstie affects the bottom line. I’m won’t suggest your site aesthetics shouldn’t be professional, but if you don’t believe me that they really don’t matter that much just look at the Drudge Report, it’s one of the single ugliest sites on the net but they crush it with traffic. In fact The Drudge Report announced that they had served more than 9Billion pageviews for 2010 by November 15th. The blog is estimated to be worth $50Million. I rest my case…
2. Placing Every Element In The Right Place: It’s easy to want to get everything placed just right but the fact is you don’t know what the perfect place is for anything until you test it. Make some assumptions, and apply best practices but it’s more important to just get it done and then start figuring out if moving something around will alter the way people interact with your site. Don’t get sucked into what you think you know. Make your best guess then test. You’ll find out how often assumptions can be wrong.
3. The Perfect Shade of… Whatever: a.k.a. “Can I get that button in cornflower blue?” Pick the colors you want and work with your designer to make sure you apply complimentary colors and accents. But nailing down the perfect shade is a waste of time. Most monitors will show your colors somewhat differently anyway and there is no way for you to control that as tightly as you would like. Dial it in, and when you are 80% of they way there move on.
4. Pages That Scroll Vertically: I’m regularly asked to design sites where people don’t have to scroll… vertically. If you worry about this don’t. Vertical scrolling doesn’t affect usability and there is almost no way to put all of the content of most pages “above the fold” for every browser/resolution combination, so don’t waste time worrying about it. You might want to make sure certain elements reside above-the-fold so don’t eat up a ridiculous amount of space with your header (most of the time).
5. Making Things Work Perfectly In IE6. I really wish I didn’t even have to address this but 2010 is the year the IE6 death spiral finally accelerates! Several big sites (including YouTube) have announced that they have dropped support for IE6. While I realize some people will still have to use it because their company mandates they do, it’s time for everyone to get on with a more up-to-date browser. The web browser is easily the most important piece of software on your computer so it should be the one that is most up to date. If you insist on IE6 support (because you want it or because you really have to have it) then expect to pay extra for the design work.

Things to Remember:

• Quality Content will get you much further than a flashy site.
• Good marketing and copywriting will get you farther than any particular color
• Testing your pages, and and other elements will serve you better than your assumptions.

A lot of people that fancy themselves designers that aren’t, and a lot of designers don’t really know the first thing about information architecture, so hire the right person for the right job and get on with building your business.