One of the things I see a lot is people talking about hosting their blogs. I have more than one person on Twitter that I follow that talks about website/blog hosting. One thing that they all fail to mention: just because you pay for your hosting does not give you the right to do whatever you wish with your hosting.

Just like the free website hosts like Tripod and Angelfire, and the free blog platforms again like Tripod, Angelfire, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, Blogger, etc, paid hosts also have “terms of service” or “TOS” attached to them. Just because you are paying them does not mean that they will not remove your site, suspend your account, or ban you from their service for violating their TOS.

Free blogging/website hosts generally have TOS that include not removing their ads (unless you pay for an upgrade), no paid ads (aka, you can’t monetize your site or blog), no pornography (although it seems the Blogger does allow risque content, as long as you tell Blogger about it first), etc. For example:

• WordPress.com does not allow any sort of monetization of their blogs. This means no AdSense, Chitika, paid posting, nada. They do put ads on some of their blogs, although personally, I have yet to see one.
• Tripod & Angelfire which offers both straight website hosting & a blogging platform do not allow you to do anything that removes the ads from your site/blog, nor do they allow any sort of adult content.

But paid hosting will also have TOS that may prevent you from keeping your site/blog up and running. Commonly these include things such as:

• Banned scripts. Some hosts have lists of scripts that are not permitted to be run on their servers. These include anything from PHP scripts that are outdated and insecure (such as PHPFanBase), to blogging platforms that are outdated and insecure (such as Greymatter). If you are unsure if a script is allowed, contact tech support for your host to make sure.
• Adult content. Contrary to popular belief, not all paid hosts allow adult content. I know someone who found this out the hard way when she set up a friend of hers with a website that had burlesque dancing videos as part of the content. They lost their site within a month of setting it up due to the no adult content rules.
• MP3 & warez files. These are two biggies. I have yet to find a host that allows them. Both software files & MP3 files generally have to be able to be proven to be yours to distribute – meaning you hold the copyrights to the files and you were the creator of the content of the files. If you didn’t write it/record it/program it yourself, you’ll probably lose your hosting if you’re found to have it on your site.
• Plagiarism. Think snagging other people’s blog posts won’t get you booted from your paid host? Think again. There are numerous ways to find out where a particular site is hosted and it is very easy to let the tech people at that hosting company know that you’re stealing content from others. If you aren’t going to write your own stuff, don’t bother.

Yes, the TOS for your hosting, whether free or paid, is long, boring, and filled to the brim with legalese. But it is important to know what your TOS allows and what it does not. Pleading that you did not know will not get your site turned back on.

Also be aware that some hosts claim ownership of your domain if they registered it for you. Not all hosts are nice enough to turn that domain name over to you if you leave them. I have lost domains that I wanted to keep because the hosting company would not let me have them. A good, reputable host will give you the domain because you paid for it (even though a lot of them say it is free with your hosting, it is not) with your hosting package. However I have seen a few disreputable hosts that because the package listed the domain as being “free” with the purchase of the package would not turn over the domain name when asked. So if you lose your site with a host, you may not be able to get your domain name from them. This is something else you will want to check the TOS for, and if it is not mentioned, ask them before you host with them how they handle domain names if the customer wishes to transfer. If all else fails, register your domain yourself and tell them you have in existing domain you want to use with your hosting account.

Another thing – always make sure you have backups of your site/blog files to make moving to a new host easier. I see a lot of people who whine and cry on Twitter because they lost their blogs/sites for whatever reason and did not have backups of files/databases so they could not just go somewhere else and set it all up again. I have even been on forums where someone has come into the forum complaining that their blog host locked them out of their blogs because of something that was posted that the blog host felt was out of line with the TOS and would not grant the blogger access to get their database so they could take the blog elsewhere.

Now I realize that sometimes it is nothing to do with the above that causes you to lose your hosting. Sometimes the hosting company goes under and you are left to scramble to find new hosting. This is just another reason to a) know what happens to the domain if the hosting goes bye-bye and b) keep backups of your site/blog.

To make a long post short – stay hosted – check your TOS, go with a reputable host that is transparent about what will happen to your domain if registered through them and you leave or lose your account due to TOS violations, and always make sure that you have backups of your site/blog so that you can easily go somewhere else if necessary.