Web Hosting 
"Australian web hosting providers offer tips"
1) Choosing a web host
Talk to people who may know more than you about Australian web hosting. Ask for their advice, make sure they know what they are talking about. Maybe you want an online shop to be hosted, this would require a different set of requirements to a 5 page business web site. It may be worth hiring someone to come out and sit down to work out exactly the sort of business web hosting you require.
2) Search the Internet
Do a search on business web site hosting in your area. Check prices and features, try and create a list and compare features from one web host to another. It may be worth putting a list of questions together to ask on areas of web hosting you are not sure of.
Word of mouth recommendations are also usually pretty reliable, if someone's had a bad experience, they will certainly let you know. Checkout this web hosting forum at the well known Whirlpool site (no it has nothing to do with washing machines), it is one Australia's best online communities for anything to do with internet and technology.
3) CMS - Content Management Systems
These are marketed to business owners who want the control of running their own website but do not have the requisite technical knowledge to be able to normally do this. They generally come in the form of WYSIWYG (wis-eee-wig) this stands for "What you see is what you get" Most use something that acts much like a Microsoft word document. I have found in many cases they can be quite clunky and difficult to use, and I find that the choices I can make over the look of the site is far to limiting.
They are also specialised applications with a primary purpose of making it as easy as possible to edit a web site easily by a novice. The problems occur because search engines often have trouble indexing these sites, which means you may never actually get indexed in the search engines at all. Also the code that is generated by these applications is often very bloated and causes your website to load very slowly.
The other problem is that once you stop paying the monthly fee, your web site in its current form will disappear and you will have to start all over again.
4) CMS Solution - The best of both worlds
Not strictly on web hosting, there is a product that we recommend for use as a CMS system that has none of the disadvantages of traditional CMS and is compatible with any website created with Dreamweaver (the majority). Its called Adobe Contribute (formerly Macromedia). It is like a cut down version of Dreamweaver that allows the the site designer to lock out all parts of the web site that they do not want modified by the client. It works absolutely brilliantly with Dreamweaver templates.
For example as a business owner you probably want to change text and photos on a regular basis. That's great, Contribute allows you to modify any text or photo on your website, however it will lock you out from changing the navigation or any of the design features of the web site (if that's what you want), it will also lock you in to only using specific fonts and font sizes for headlines and text. This keeps your web site looking consistent throughout. There is nothing worse than going to a website that has so many fonts and font sizes it looks like a ransom demand.
Your web site is indexed just like any other website for the search engines, it is easier to adhere to existing wc3 standards, and if you decide to move hosts for whatever reason, you can take your website with you. The best bit is it actually does not cost that much (@$250AUS) compare this to the $1400 for a copy of Dreamweaver, along with all the training that is required to use it.
Also of note is a free CMS product called Joomla or the less popular Mambo. They are both very similar. While you will have to pay for the expertise to install them, once installed they are easy for the novice to use and update, well worth a look.
5) Hosting and Design - Segregate them
Keep them separate, this is related to the points on CMS above. Most CMS systems are integrated into the hosting package. So you pay a larger sum of money for the hosting company to provide you with a means to build your own web site with minimum experience.
The trouble with this is that your web site design and hosting is the same thing, stop paying your hosting fees, and you kiss good bye to your website that you possibly spend hundreds of hours on. So your website is not transferable to another host.
It is important to segregate them because you keep control of your website which is extremely important.
6) Potential host with shocking web site
Have you done a search on web hosting and landed on a page that looks like it has been whipped up in 10 min's by a high school kid in his spare time? Well the chances are that's exactly what has happened. Even worse, his server is probably under his bed on standard mains power that cuts out every time his mum uses the kettle, oh dear...
Now is that someone you want to rely on to improve your business reputation. Remember their reliability reflects onto your reputation.
One of the reasons we write these articles is to demonstrate to you, the client/potential client that a) we know what we are talking about b) we publish our knowledge so that it is open to scrutiny by the wider community and c) To help the wider business community evaluate more effectively the decisions they make regarding business technology.. We write about the services we provide. It shows we know our stuff. It shows that we have taken the time to develop this site, and that it has not been put up in 10 minutes. For a web host there is no excuse for having a web site that looks like a dogs breakfast, it shows a lack of care, a lack of organisation which will probably flow on to the way your web hosting is managed.
We only provide web hosting to our CRYSYS managed services customers as part of the CRYSYS product.