Why Magento Hosting is Crucial for Your Magento Store

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Magento Hosting is a very popular e-commerce solution, so it’s perfectly understandable that individuals are looking for hosting plans that happen to be optimized accordingly. Just as specialized wordpress hosting companies, forum hosting companies and others have managed to produce subniches as far as hosting is concerned, “Magento hosting” will probably be a term increasingly more people will be using.

There are quite a few reseller hosting companies, for example, with web hosting packages which have been optimized for Magento and if that’s true, you will probably find a descriptive sales page on their website which does all of the explaining. If ever the web hosting company doesn’t have a hyperlink with a Magento hosting package on its homepage, it is possible to still determine if it could represent a Magento hosting solution by:

Finding Magento’s Requirements

To start with, you need to go with a Linux box, this much is assured. Magento commerce supports Apache 1.3.x, Apache 2.0.x along with Apache 2.2.x, so most web hosts would qualify from this perspective. Now so far as PHP is concerned, there are particular things that you need to keep in mind.

Magento is compatible with PHP 5.2 (make sure you have a memory limit of 128 Mb at the minimum) but be sure to make sure that the php function safe_mode is off. Additionally, there are certain required extensions which you may want to recollect about: simplexml, hash, PDO_MySQL, DOM, mcrypt, curl, SOAP, GD and iconv.

Your server needs to be able to run cron but it also needs to be able to override options such as the .htaccess file is concerned. And eventually, on the subject of SSL, it’s good to know that it doesn’t support self-signed certificates.

Which Web Hosts Qualify?

Most companies which provide Linux hosting (i.e. cpanel web hosting, reseller web hosting, unlimited domain hosting , etc.) solutions are able to cater to your requirements, but it’s extremely vital that you make sure that your package supports Magento before making the payment. When you’re not 100% sure, contact the sales department of each hosting company and ask them.

Plenty of companies have a live online support interface, to make sure you’ll be capable of finding someone who can answer this query immediately and without even picking up the phone. If an internet support interface is not available, you can still simply email them or (if you would like a response ASAP) give them a call. Most good cpanel reseller hosting companies as well as unlimited domain hosting companies offer 24×7  support, so getting in touch with someone shouldn’t be complicated at all.

It’s extremely imperative that you choose only companies with whom you’re 100% comfortable. On the one hand, it can be true that cheap website hosting packages will always be tempting, but when it comes to Magento hosting, going with providers which have proven themselves time and time again is certainly the most effective long-term solution.

In fact, would you rather save some dollars here and there but face the danger of the site being offline a lot? The implications are a lot more than obvious: less traffic, ultimately fewer sales, you’d probably wind up losing considerably more assets than you’ve managed to save by going with the cheapest option. Better to pay a little bit extra money but know that you’re working with true professionals.

Magento Hosting Errors?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of mistakes associated with Magento hosting which could cost you. Leaving the previously mentioned mistake aside (always going with the cheaper options), there are quite a few other things which could cause problems.

First of all, not monitoring your site on a daily basis is certainly not a recommended practice. You never know what could go wrong, so keeping track of things will certainly not hurt. Maybe your hosting companies will upgrade one thing or another and that will interfere with Magento, you just never know. The moment you notice a problem, contact your web host ASAP and don’t forget to mention that you’re running Magento. An excellent Magento Hosting support representative should be able to determine the reason for the problem quickly and will make the required changes within moments.

Don’t forget to be careful when installing other applications in your server. There are instances where certain scripts or applications can interfere with Magento. It’s not uncommon to change your settings in order to have the ability to run a certain application, only to realize the new settings caused problems with Magento afterwards. Anyone makes mistakes and, again, that’s why always monitoring things is recommended. When you follow these simple guidelines, finding an excellent Magento Hosting company and running a profitable Magento website will be a piece of cake.

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