Choosing A Dreamweaver Hosting Provider

Dreamweaver Introduction
Dreamweaver is an incredibly powerful web editor, or HTML compiler. As a WYSIWYG editor it is a particularly popular choice with inexperienced web designers. There’s no need to learn HTML or any other programming language, although it will help if you know a little to help debug any problems you might suffer. Because of Dreamweaver’s huge popularity there are also numerous free and premium templates available all over the Internet making it a very useful tool for the online developer.

About Dreamweaver Hosting Compatibility
If you have been looking for web hosts then you may have noticed that quite a large portion of hosts claim Dreamweaver compatibility. While this is certainly true, it is also misleading to an extent. Dreamweaver creates clean, standards-compliant HTML that, unlike Microsoft’s FrontPage, does not include any program specific tags. The end result means that all hosts are compatible with your finished websites. Compatibility comes into question because Dreamweaver also includes an FTP file manager to upload and download pages directly to and from your remote server. Not all hosting accounts do include this reverse compatibility.

Using FTP File Management
FTP is a massive advantage for developers and offers a very quick way to update your website without having to continually update and save your documents through the web interface. Finding a “Dreamweaver compatible” host that offers FTP uploading shouldn’t be that difficult because while it is certainly not definite that all hosts will include this it is a fairly common feature. If you understand FTP and want to have that increased functionality then certainly ensure that you look for FTP hosting accounts.

Free Templates
Another possible indicator as to the ideal host for your Dreamweaver website is that some hosting accounts actually offer Dreamweaver templates as part of their hosting package. If you have yet to design your site, or you want to give your existing site a makeover then these could offer that little extra something you’ve been looking for.

Network Uptime Guarantee
However, you should never overlook other aspects simply to gain access to some free templates. Regardless of the application you use to set up your website you should always ensure that the site itself will be accessible for the vast majority of the time once it is online. Always look at the network uptime guarantee that a host offers. This should be an absolute minimum of 99.9% meaning that your website will, on average, be unavailable to your visitors for 0.1% of the time, or roughly one hour every four days. Some hosts can offer better than this but this is the most common guarantee available.

Ensuring Site Security
A secure site is also essential to your success. In order to guarantee a secure site you will need to be able to guarantee that the data center your host uses is as secure as possible. Obviously, it is unlikely that you will be able to physically visit the data center yourself but do some research. Try to find out if the host collocates their servers in a data center or if they have their own dedicated center. Look at as much information as is available. Fortunately, you should still have a lot of options in terms of the hosting account you will eventually decide on. Use this to eliminate any hosts that just don’t appear to offer what you are looking for. You can be as choosy as you like at this point.

Free Features Included With Your Hosting
Features and add-ons are a big part of some hosting accounts. Some accounts offer free domains, free scripts, and free shopping baskets. Others offer much more bandwidth and disk space. If your site is a large site and you believe you will have a lot of visitors then you should concentrate on hosts that will match these criteria first and then look at the free additions that are included.

Dreamweaver Hosting Conclusion
Dreamweaver is a popular and powerful web site editor that also includes an FTP file manager. Because the pages it creates are standards compliant HTML documents all hosting packages are Dreamweaver compliant. However, to take advantage of the FTP section of the program you should look for hosts that offer FTP access. Always consider the network uptime guarantee and security when hosting any website. Not all hosts are equal so make sure you get the best deal for your circumstances.