Webhosting is a complicated subject and very few websites take the time and effort to explain the relationship and difference between the various concepts. I have written about webhosting and compared hosting plans several times before. But my explanations have always been limited in depth and I encouraged my readers to research further. The articles on WebHostingRating.com take a different approach – explaining in detail the issues of hosting. For example, some of the topics include hosting multiple domains on a single account, how scripting language options can influence your webhosting decision and even tests to check if a webhosting company will stand up to your expectations. In short, WebHostingRating is a great resource for novices and experts alike.

What Makes WHR Unique

The Top 10 Web Hosting list on the top of the left sidebar shows a comparison between the biggest hosts in the industry. The comparison is based on an undisclosed rating system. Clicking the name of any of the webhosts will take you to their website via a referral script – presumably for identifying and cashing in on an account referral, if the visitor decides to sign up.

Apart from the abundance of web hosting articles and tutorials on the site, WebHostingRating also talks about the uncommon aspects of webhosting. Features such as Frontpage support, ecommerce focus and cPanel dashboard make some hosting companies unique and valuable for users. A few cPanel tutorials are included on WHR. Some of them dealing with fairly advanced topics of htaccess usage, Fantastico , phpMyAdmin and email autoresponders.

Areas of Improvement

Even though WHR is a great asset for all webmasters a few aspects of the website are lacking. The links on the left sidebar for Hosting Awards 2008 and the footer are non functional in Firefox 3 or Internet Explorer 7. The links redirect to the top of the current page and do not add any value to the website. But this is a minor flaw in Webhostingrating and does not have any bearing on the informative webhosting articles.

In the future I would like to see a recommendation system from WHR which would ask the user certain basic questions such as Windows or Linux preference, traffic estimate, disk usage and point them to the most suitable host. Another highly desirable feature would be screencast tutorials on some of the basic topics such as ”Setting Up Your First Website” and ”Configuring FTP and Email”. These kind of screencasts would greatly help the novice user and give them confidence to go ahead and setup a hosting account. A few Quicklinks would also be desirable pointing to the the cheapest host, the most reliable webhost and maybe even the most expensive webhost.

Verdict

WebHostingRating is a highly recommended site which aims to make a profit by educating the users how to choose a webhost and then recommending an appropriate webhost for them depending on their needs.

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