Below are a summary for the Drupal web hosting needs according to my experience with it.
Just like looking for a web hosting solution for all the other type of web site, you will need to think about your needs on disk space, monthly transfer, and emailox, etc. And in below, we will discuss some key features are needed by a Drupal site.
1) Linux Platform with support for php, and MySQL or PostgreSQL. Drupal is an application developed by php, and run against MySQL or PostgreSQL. So, a support for php with database MySQL or PostgreSQL is the basic requirement for Drupal Hosting. And we would like to suggest a Linux web hosting package considering it is the perfect platform to run php and MySQL.
2) Easy to use Control Panel which will allow you to maintain Database, and conduct some routine maintenance tasks for your Drupal application
- An easy to use to tool to create MySQL or PostgreSQL database and grant the access.
- phpMyAdmin or phpPgAdmin to manipulate the data in the database, execute the backup or restore tasks to the data.
- An editor to modify the Cron job of the system. There are many tasks need to run regularly. A permission to change the Cron file will be very helpful for the Drupal webmasters
- Privilege to change the access permission of the file and directory.
3) Very fast connection speed to the database. Many web hosting providers haven't optimized the connection speed between web server and database server, which causes Drupal run very slowly. This feature you will only know after installing Drupal in their environment.
4) Reliable web hosting service provider with courteous and professional customer support. As an CMS web site, nothing can be more important than a stable environment.
