This is a very sensitive topic considering the role a plays in your joy or regret of investing money in owning a website.
There are a lot of web hosting companies out there of which 80% can really mess you up. You must take to heart that not all web host out there are actually web hosting companies.
Web Host and Web Host resellers: There is a difference between a web hosting company and a reseller

Web Hosting companies: These are companies that own the hosting server that are used to allocate web space in fractions on request to prospective buyers or site owners for hosting their websites. These companies are under obligation to render support directly to you in the time of need.

Web Host Resellers: these are companies who do not directly own the servers but are given a privileged right to sale web space allocated to them at any price of their choice. You do not have any contact with the actual hosting companies as their identities are only known by the reseller.

The reseller offers all the support you might require while the main host renders support to the retailer
Note that some Resellers are actually more effective in support than the so called main hosting companies. This may be attributed to the fact that they are still small and need the customers to increase for them to grow. Whatever the case, as long as it keeps our sites up and running, we are okay.

This does not exonerate the very BAD ones. Many of the resellers don’t even know what the business of web hosting is all about before proceeding to be a reseller.

Look out for the following when choosing a Web Host: UPTIME and CUSTOMER SUPPORT
visit www.webzoneit.com/webhosting.htm to get good insight on this Topic

Your article made a good reading. A few more things prospective web hosting buyers should consider are: pricing, and ease of payment.
Are the prices right? Is it easy for you to make payment for the services?

Yes niyyie,
The price and payment should be considered but most times people place the price ahead of this other things I mentioned earlier. without the knowledge of the Uptime and Customer support, you will not be able to peg the price as some can deceive you with low prices but can't givegood result, also some make the payment seem easy but can't keep proper track of your bank payment made to them.
I had an issue once where I payed for some domain names into the bank account of a hosting company but two weeks after sending them the bank payment details; my domain account with them was still reading unpaid.
This takes us back to the customer support, I mentioned earlier.

The Customer Support issue does not only apply to hosting companies, it is applicable to any corporate organization. The Customer care in a way represents the image of the company and leaves clients with certain impression.
For online business, it 's quite obvious that the way you attend to your customers will definitely tell whether they will like to do business with you since it's likely they might see "face-to-face" before placing their orders and making payment.
Therefore, they would require some form of assurance that they are not being swindled.

However, In Africa very few hosting companies have excellence customer support and among them is web4africa , not only is the service great, the live chat support ensures that you get firsthand attention from professionals who are always ready to give necessary back up you need.

Hi fransois_1
Thanks for the info on web4africa, I will check them out. if they really as good as you say, then they will be included on our list of recommended host at www.webzoneit.com/webhost.htm

If you have nice write ups on web design and hosting that could benefit the public feel free to forward it to me at the email address in the site www.webzoneit.com
But please include Author details
Cheers

@Kclexa,
You will soon hear from me.

Ok

http://www.webzoneit.com/webhost.htm gave a 404 error dude.

hi
Am so sorry the right link is:
http://www.webzoneit.com/webhosting.htm

For my typographical error earlier on.

Thanks for giving information.It's very useful tips for beginners.Here i wish to share some information about web hosting.Whenever you choose a hosting provider,be aware that provider is trustworthy and provide 24/7 technical support.
Here i list some points while consider to choose a best web hosting services.
1.Amount of web space
2.FTP access
3.File type and size limitations
4.Reliability and speed of access
5.Supported Languages
6.Bandwidth allotment
I followed all the above points and found 9cubehosting.com Recently i bought Linux based hosting service from this site.I like their services.

I use Heroku and sometimes Google App Engine, plus Amazon EC2 cloud service for a lot of hosting.
For sensitive website, you would want to host in Iceland where there is ultimate freedom of speech. That's where wikileaks hosts.
For file linking website, you would want to host in Spain, because file linking there was declared legal. Can also use "bulletproof" Russian hosting.

For cheap hosting, just go through the bitcoin wiki https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade and find hosts. I've used Cinfu they're ok and cheap. For DDOS protection subscribe to Cloudflare.com and if you have enough money upgrade to pro ddos protection through them. Blacklotus and Prolexic are awful, overpriced and do not protect.