Over the years, I’ve noticed that when most people start talking about web development, they immediately throw web hosting into the mix.  “Okay, so you develop in PHP, where do you host?” is often the flow of things.

The problem is, your website is YOUR BUSINESS ASSET, not mine.  Hence asking me where I host is the wrong question.  It should be “where do you recommend that we host our site.”

That bit was drilled home to me again last week.  A friend asked me to talk with one of his friends, and it turned out he’d had a web development deal that went totally south on him, and even worse, the site was hosted on the errant web developer’s server.  A potently bad mix…

Luckily for this fellow, he had control of his domain names for both of his sites, so I was able to put up a couple quick lander pages for him and change name servers, and he was no longer at the not so tender mercy of his former developer, and in a spot where he could start searching for a new developer (that won’t be me, I’m quite busy enough with my regular work now and couldn’t do his project justice).

So let’s all repeat after me: my domain names and my website hosting services are business assets, and no matter what I should maintain control over them!