One of the recurring questions in Moodle forums is people asking for advice on where to host their Moodle site. In this blog entry we will discuss technical considerations for choosing a Moodle hosting provider.

Some Important Factor to Choose Moodle Hosting Provider

Capacity

While some providers are very inexpensive, they are not designed to manage the load of concurrent users.  When a number of concurrent users utilize the system(sometimes it is as low as 10 concurrent users), Moodle runs very slow and students become frustrated.

When choosing the right environment for your site, it is important to note how many students will be working on the same platform, and more importantly how many people do you expect to be accessing the site concurrently.  This will help you determine the hardware requirements for your site.

Your Hosting Provider Must Support Lastest PHP version

The first consideration is what version of Moodle you will be hosting. You need to know what the prerequisites for the infrastructure are for each version of Moodle. This is documented in the technical directions for each version.

It is also important that you are able to configure MySQL and PHP to meet the requirements the version of Moodle you are running. Many hosting providers do not allow this.

One of the biggest problems people run into is that their hosting provider has not updated php  to version 5.5 or higher which is required for versions Moodle 2.0 and higher. Moodle also requires a specific configuration of PHP, which many hosting providers to not support. On HostForLIFEASP.NET, you can easily install your moodle on their hosting environment. They have supported the latest Moodle 2.6 on their hosting environment. It means that they support the latest PHP version their Control Panel.

Performance is Important Thing

Google penalize websites that are slow in loading speed.

In this competitive world, we can’t afford to get penalized or having our readers closing the page even before it starts to load.

And this is the most important job for any web hosting company out there; getting your website loading as fast as possible.

The truth is, not every web hosting company is bad and those big web hosting companies would want you to think of that (especially for competitions). Well, bad things does happen from time to time and not every situation such as traffic spike can be controlled.

If your main concern is website loading speed, there is only one concern you need to consider – that’s the location of data centers. HostForLIFEASP.NET has different data center in Europe that makes your site run faster. You can select their Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, London, and also US datacenter if you are using their hosting services. You can go with HostForLIFEASP.NET as they offer good uptime and website loading speed. Please just see the chart below for complete information

Logically speaking, the closer your readers are to these data centers, the faster the website loading speed would be.

Therefore, choose the right web hosting company that has data centers closest to your readers.

Find Great Web Hosting Support

Here’s the thing. If you are a newbie, beginner or a person who is really bad at these tech stuffs, support really comes in handy. And even if you are good enough for the job, make sure the web host that you choose has a good track record for support.

To ensure customers concentrate on their businesses without being distracted, HostForLIFEASP.NET offers a high level of customer service. A group of professional, experienced, well-trained and patient technical support staffs are on-site 24/7 to solve customer problems immediately.

Furthermore, in the knowledgebase, technicians have written a pile of useful articles to help customers learn more about hosting and teach them how to deal with common issues independently.

How Long They are in Business

As much as possible, get a Moodle host that has been in the industry for a few years compared to one that is starting out. This is because the more experienced companies already know the common problems that you may encounter while availing of their services, so they are able to address these issues quickly and efficiently, unlike fledgling companies that do trial-and-error to see what remedies will actually work, since they’re not yet familiar with most of the issues that may emerge in web hosting.

HostForLIFEASP.NET has been in this business for almost a decade. It proves their existence in this web hosting business. They can survive and become one of the best web hosting provider in Europe. You can’t go wrong with them.

Security is No #1

The security of your host is very important. You can lock down your files as much as possible, but if they are somehow available online then they are going to be able to be read if they are hacked via the server. It may take time for the hacked server to break into your files, but there is nothing you can do to stop them. It is up to your host to stop people hacking the server, or adding viruses or malware to the server.

Other Best Moodle Hosting Recommendation

While tens of thousands of hosts exist that support the minimum requirement and recommendations for Moodle, you can also rely on ASPHostPortal.com. They have been in this business for more than 8 years.

What Does ASPHostPortal Offer?

Like many other hosts, ASPHostPortal offers the “1-click” Moodle install, and when installed in this manner it offers auto-upgrades as well. This makes it so that one could buy a domain and hosting, and have Moodle setup ready in less than 10 minutes in most cases. If considering ASPHostPortal for more than just Moodle, because you can host unlimited web sites with just the one package, other popular “1-click” install apps include: Drupal, Joomla, BlogEngine, WordPress, Zen Cart, DotNetNuke, PrestaShop, osCommerce, nopCommerce, and more.

The standard features for ASPHostPortal include 5 GB disk space, 60 GB bandwidth, domain hosting & email accounts. The stand-out features include the 30 days money back guarantee. If you register for Host Two Yearly plan with promo code “FREEDOMAIN”, you can get 1 FREE domain. For WhoIs privacy there is an additional yearly cost of about $10.00. Since the feature set for hosting is often the same across the board, getting a free domain which saves you about $10 is a good selling point.

The Moodle hosting package at ASPHostPortal is currently $5.00 per month. With $5.00 per month, you can host unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, install more than 100 free applications instead of Moodle.

• ASPHostPortal offers several options to get in touch with them and to ask questions. These options include:
• Direct email addresses to 24/7 technical support and business hours billing.
• In-depth Knowledge Base.
• Frequently updated blog. Topics include announcements, industry news, marketing, research, technical, and much more.
• Social networking including Google+, Twitter (1,500+ tweets), and Facebook.

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