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1. Stability
Make sure your host makes a big deal of this. They should be boasting about their stability, praising the worthiness of their redundant servers, touting the dozens of (maybe that's an exaggeration) backup backbones--you get the point. If they aren't doing so, you can be pretty sure they haven't taken the necessary steps to ensure stability. A sure sign of an unreliable host: pages on their own site don't load, take too long to load, or sometimes load and sometimes don't.
2. Professionalism
The generic images of a server on a silver grey background give a bad impression. Unless you are looking at a free host (even then, try to avoid hosts that seem generic), never go with hosts that are generic or seem unprofessional. These are simply hosts that are meant to be bought out by other hosts. Hosts with "Under Construction" or any dead links are never be used. Keep your four ninety-five for a nice juicy hamburger instead.
3. A "logical" price
For example, $1.99 a year for an ASP Windows host probably shows that the host is just desperate for clients and doesn't provide good quality hosting. After all, if the host is good, why won't people all rush to get on the bandwagon? And if they are really a great host, how can they be so cheap?
Normal prices should range from $4.99 a month to $10.99 a month for basic plans.
4. Logical features
Unlimited bandwidth? Unlikely. If it's unlimited, how are they going to pay for the added costs? Unlimited storage? Impossible. Every host has physical servers, and there is absolutely no way the servers will have an unlimited amount of space available even if someone keeps uploading large files. What is more likely is a large amount of storage space, for example, 1000 Gigabytes of space. Many people hardly use 50% of their storage space, so the host ends up with a lot of extra server resources for others to use.
Look for at least five to ten times the amount of storage in the amount bandwidth they offer.
Also, do not underestimate how often you will need customer service, so make high quality customer service a prerequisite for your host.
5. Affiliate program
A sure sign of quality services, confidence in their own company, and a relatively long period of peace before another host will acquire that company. Web hosts with affiliate programs take a great risk: they give away hundreds of thousands dollar's worth of commission to affiliates--they must therefore both have a very good service and a lot of confidence in themselves in order to give away that money in advance.
6. Rave Reviews
Need I say more? Oh yes, I do have to say more. Websites with affiliate links to hosts tend to be biased.
7. Money back guarantee
Sometimes, even when you've taken all the precautions above, the host still turns out to be a sour lemon. Make sure they have an unconditional money back guarantee so that you can start all over again.
The question always exists for novices: should I learn to do everything with code, or should I just create the site with an editor?
Some answer, "Use the editor: nothing can go wrong, and it's easier."
Really? Not really. The built-in inflexibility of webpage editors makes it ideal for small webpages, but impossible to use for slightly more complex sites.
Take this for an example. A friend was creating a website with Dreamweaver CS3, the newest stuff, only to have three PHP errors inside the code because DW didn't know the hierarchy of the files it was creating.
Adding three "../"'s fixed the problem.
Here's one thing to remember: If you learn to program in code, you will have no trouble using a WYSIWYG editor, but if you learn to go the (seemingly) easier way may produce more troubles than you desire.
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