There are a lot of things to consider when selecting a hosting company for your Joomla site. Generally the first things we look at is the price, storage, and bandwidth, but I would argue that storage and bandwidth are mostly irrelevant as criteria for choosing a host. Purchasing a hosting service simply because it offers a huge amount of storage and bandwidth is like purchasing a car because it has four tires. Every hosting company provides tons of storage and tons of bandwidth for a reasonably low price, to ensure that really takes those two things out of the equation. Price is important, but I would also argue that it should not be the most essential factor either. Read on to get some tips for what to appear for in the Joomla! host.

Whene selecting a hosting company for my site, what should I look for?

The answer to the question of what you must should look for in a hosting company really varies depending on the needs of your site. However, there are some basic features that you will need if you wish to install Joomla! successfully:

• Apache 1.3 or above or Microsoft IIS (Apache 2.2 or above is optimal)
• PHP 4.Three.10 or above (PHP 5.x or above is optimal)
• MySQL Three.23.x or above (MySQL 5.x is optimal)

Most web hosts that offer Linux hosting provide these minimum needs, so that is generally not a problem. Another point I like to appear for in a host is whether or not they offer easy tools for managing a MySQL database, like phpMyAdmin. Again, most web hosts provide phpMyAdmin.

The Joomla! installation application checks for some basic requirements that also must be met in order to install Joomla!!!! These requirements are as follows:

PHP Version >= 4.Three.10: Most web hosts meet this requirement. If your internet host does not meet this requirement, you need to think about switching hosts.

• Zlib Compression Support: Joomla! makes use of Zlib compression for installing extensions. If your server doesn't have Zlib Compression assistance, you cannot use the extension installer.
• XML Support: Joomla! makes use of XML for extension installation, and for managing extension parameters.
• MySQL Support: Joomla! uses the MySQL database engine to store and retrieve data.
• MB Language is Default: MB stands for multibyte. Multibyte language support allows for supporting languages that use so many characters that they can't be contained in the single byte like English can.
• MB String Overload Off: MB String Overload is really a PHP setting that enables programmers to use standard string functions for handling multibyte strings. Joomla! requires this setting to be away.

configuration.php Writable: You can really go via the installation process if configuration.php isn't writable, but it creates installation easier if it is writable. This is not a web host requirement, because this can easily be overcome by changing the file permissions on the server.

These fundamental needs are also usually met by most hosts. An additional set of recommended settings within the Joomla! installer are as follows:

Secure Mode Off: Secure mode is really a setting that limits PHP to ensure that it can only perform actions on files and folders with the same owner as the one PHP makes use of. This should be turned away to ensure that Joomla! can perform actions on any file or folder using the proper permission settings.

Display Errors Away: For a live website, you would like the PHP display errors setting turned off because if there is really a PHP error, you wish to be able to control the display of that error. For testing, it really makes sense to have Display Errors On so that you could debug potential issues in your site.

• File Uploads On: If your server prevents file uploads via http, you cannot use the powerful extension installer built into Joomla!. There are other ways to install extensions, but the installer makes it so much simpler.
• Magic Quotes Runtime Away: Magic quotes is really a setting in PHP that automatically adds slashes to strings to escape quote characters for the purpose of saving the string to a database. The problem with this setting is that it can potentially add slashes to strings where you don't want slashes. Joomla! has built-in libraries for handling strings for saving them towards the database, so Magic Quotes is not necessary.
• Register Globals Away: Having Register Globals on leaves your website open to security vulnerabilities. You can read more about Register Globals at http://us.php.net/register_globals/. Joomla! has libraries that emulate the register globals setting, so it's not necessary.
• Output Buffering Off: Output buffering can enhance performance, but the directive ought to be set to off and output buffering ought to be explicitly enabled within the program code.
• Session Auto Begin Away: The session auto begin directive enables PHP scripts to work with sessions without requiring the script to explicitly begin the session. The issue with session auto begin is that if it is enabled in PHP, objects in the session classes must be loaded before the session starts. This can cause issues if the objects are not loaded, so Joomla! starts sessions explicitly to maintain control over the session starting procedure.

These settings are just recommendations, but you should really try and discover a host that either a) meets these recommendations, or b) allows you to change settings on your server so that it meets these recommendations.

Ultimately, for me the choice of a web host boils down to reliability and assistance. The most common measure of reliability is uptime, meaning what percentage of time is your server up and running so that your site is accessible to your visitors. Assistance is another key point because, let's face it, items happen. When they do take place, you want to have a internet host that you could trust to assist get your server and your site back up and running.