So, tell me what is wrong with this scenario:

John's Widgets goes to Purple, Rock, Scissors. for a web site.  After several discovery meetings, a statement of work is written and, in turn, approved by John.  Purple, Rock, Scissors. provides several comps, John approves and work begins.  Six to nine weeks later, John's widgets has a beautiful website which he absolutely loves and he is ready to go live.  John is ecstatic, he can't wait...he asks when can the world see his website?

Many web development firms do not take the time to help their clients choose appropriate hosting.  From that perspective, the answer to the conundrum above puts all the responsibility for hosting on John's widgets.  Does he have web hosting?  Did he ever ensure that the framework or CMS that his Orlando web development firm, Purple, Rock, Scissors used will function on his current hosting provider?  Honestly...most clients don't really care about hosting.  They want to see their shiny new website, but honestly, they could care less what is happening behind the scenes.  Web hosting, for many clients, is an afterthought.  In reality though, the web application determines what kind of hosting is needed.  Your hosting environment should never define or limit what your application can do.  If John's Widgets has an inappropriate host or he has no hosting at all, it could be 3-6 weeks including testing to get his site ready for an official live deployment. 

Here at Purple, Rock, Scissors., we never let you go it alone.  From the beginning, our statement of work will always include time allotted in the development schedule for providing hosting recommendations, giving you time to choose a host, and then if you prefer...we'll take care of the rest.  We'll guide you through the process of purchasing the server and we set up and configure your server to the exact specifications we require to make your application perform at peak performance.  Knowing the host up front helps us to develop your application so that it will function properly on the chosen environment.

You may be asking, what about my application determines what kind of hosting I need?  Well, this question is actually quite complex...there are many different factors that come into play, so lets take a look at the most important factors.

Estimated Traffic / Bandwidth Utilization - The amount of traffic your site is expected to see can play a large part in your hosting solution.  Many low-end web hosting providers (ie: $200 for 2 years of hosting) impose bandwidth limits on their clients.  You certainly do NOT want to see your site go down 3 days into its launch because you've already exceeded your bandwidth for the month, do you?  That is always an embarassing situation and it could take days to sort the situation out with your hosting provider.  We'll call that the "Failure to Launch" scenario.  Having a good idea of how much bandwidth you utilize may not be a number in the back of your head that you just keep handy when people ask.  We'll help you to understand what your current traffic patterns / bandwdith utilization are and how they will mesh with different types of hosting providers.

Content Format - Content format is certainly a consideration when choosing a web hosting provider.  Are you planning on hosting video on your site?  Perhaps you should think again.  Hosting videos on your site can quickly eat up even a Terrabyte of allotted bandwidth per month.  Each person that streams your video could be using 60 - 120 MB of bandwidth per view.  Take a look at the average video on YouTube.  If the video is good, it might see 100,000 hits.  To set this in perspective, a 120 MB video viewed 100,000 times can be equivalent to almost 12 terabytes of bandwidth utilization.  Depending on the popularity of your content and target audience, this may not be an issue for you...but it should certainly be considered.

Content Generators - Are you the only person generating content?  Is your site entirely dependent on it's user-base to generate content?  If you are in complete control of your content, then you have a little less to worry about.  However, the minute you allow users to post their own content...you could develop a fairly large user-base posting content regularly.  These users could lead to increased bandwidth and CPU utilization on the chosen server.

Virality - Anyone who has ever forwarded a YouTube link or a funny email knows what virality is...whether they know it or not.  Viral websites are those sites or pieces of content which are extremely popular and spread by word of mouth...almost like an epidemic.  Viral content is certainly nothing to scoff at.  Most people who create this content tend to get a much-deserved (sometimes undeserved) 15 minutes of fame and will almost certainly go down in the internet history books.  However, hosting content which has the potential for millions of views, is certainly not easy.  It is extremely taxing on a server to support a large number of requests in a short period of time.  Bandwidth utilization also comes into play, as the host who is chosen may not be able to offer you the bandwidth you require...or they will offer it at an undesireable price.

Application Framework - Sometimes in an effort to shorten application development time (and cost), a rapid development framework or Content Management System (CMS) is utilized.  Purple, Rock, Scissors is a PHP web development firm, thus many of the frameworks we utilize require special PHP plugins or require us to set up special libraries that make our code function as expected.  These requirements cannot always be met with certain web hosts.

Mail - Most applications need to send emails...even if you are not running an email server.  Most sites send emails to users for password resets, user signups, and general newsletters.  Many hosts, particularly low-end hosting providers have issues sending email reliably.  This can be a dead-end issue with some hosting providers and usually leads to additional costs as the client site has to be migrated to a new server solution.

OK, so we've taken a look at what factors we need to consider with the application content and application design.  Now let 's see what we need to look for in our hosting provider, depending on application requirements.

Normal Bandwidth Framework-based Applications

If your application is hosting mostly text-based content, you can probably suffice with a lower-end hosting solution to help cut costs.  Many of these applications host fine on a Virtual Private Server.  There are caveats to this though, as many VPS providers do not offer "Managed Hosting".  It all depends on your application and how often changes will need to be made to the server.  In most cases, the application is self-sufficient and requires very little in the way of server management.  Some applications can even be hosted in a shared hosting environment...although we traditionally do not recommend it.  When you start sharing your server with other people, even though your content is separate and safe from other clients on the server, mail delivery can be an issue.  Many shared hosting providers utilize dynamic SMTP (mail sending) servers which have already been blacklisted as spammers.  Therefore, even though you have legitimate email to send to a client, your client's mail provider may not accept emails sent from these providers.  In some cases, this may bring your application to its knees as people can't sign up unless they receive a verification email.

Intermediate Bandwidth / Framework-based Applications

If your application is based on a framework and it requires a predictable amount of bandwidth, we usually recommend a private managed physical server.  We have found that Peer1 provides reliable hosting packages in the $250 / month range with backups.  This way you can be assured that your data is always safe and that your application will be looked after.  They provide 1 Terabyte -> Unlimited bandwidth packages, a la carte upgrades for your server (such as RAM) or hard drive space and an upgrade path so that as your application grows, they can grow with you to meet your needs.  These hosting providers never have issues with mail and we are allowed to install whatever requirements we need to make your application function properly.  This is a great mid-grade solution that can grow with you and is our hosting of choice for even an average web application.

High Bandwidth/Traffic  CMS/Framework Applications

Let's say your application is vastly popular already and you are looking to upgrade.  Perhaps you just KNOW that your application is going to be viral.  We normally recommend Cloud computing solutions such as RightScale to provide on-demand scalability so your application never goes down...no matter how much traffic you get.  The great part about cloud computing is that your application will scale back to conserve costs when less visitors are on the site.  You essentially only pay for the computing power you need on a day-by-day basis.  Since most applications of this nature make more revenue as the number of visitors to the site increases, the increased and (somewhat unpredictable) cost of hosting is cancelled out.  There is a base cost that you will pay to maintain the environment, but you only pay for usage spikes as they occur.  While RightScale is a great solution, it does have some caveats such as SMTP (mail sending) issues.  As Amazon Web Services provides the actual "virtual" servers, they do not support the necessary reverseDNS pointer record which is required for most recipients to accept your incoming mail.  I'm not going to go in detail here, I'll cover that in a future post...but regardless running any mail delivery application on an Amazon Machine Instance (virtual server) requires additional third-party SMTP services from a company such as AuthSMTP.  Depending on mail volume, this COULD make or break this solution for some clients.

As odd as it sounds, the earlier we know the hosting, the better.  Many people just assume that hosting is an afterthought, as it is one of the last steps in the application delivery process and that we can call and activate at any time.  Sometimes hosting contracts can take weeks to get things squared away, purchase and have the server provisioned, and set up with our requirements.  Not to mention, if we realize as an afterthought that the application needs to be hosted with RightScale or another cloud computing solution for on-demand scalability, many changes need to be made to the application to make it function properly in a load-balanced cloud computing environment.  These changes could potentially set back deployment by weeks.

I bet you never realized just how much goes into choosing an appropriate hosting provider, did you?  It is a long and arduous process to match an application with appropriate hosting. However, Purple, Rock, Scissors aspires to get you into a hosting solution which gives your web application room to grow without overpaying for processing power you may never use.  Once we have discussed your application and have a final set of features, a good idea of what your traffic patterns will look like, then we can make appropriate recommendations for your web hosting.  By being proactive, we can deliver your application when you are ready without hesitation.  This is actually just a quick glance at hosting and how it can affect project delivery times, and application development requirements. 

When you're ready to take your web application to the next level, Purple, Rock, Scissors. is here to help!