FAQ
If
your website is essentially a support to your main business, providing
marketing and information services for your customers, off-the-shelf
hosting solutions are usually right for you. If your website handles
all or most of your business, rather than supporting business
activities elsewhere, you probably need a complex hosting solution.
One
way to look at hosting requirements is in terms of the 'problem
tolerance' of your business. How much downtime, slowdown or data loss
can you tolerate before it affects your business? If you feel your site
could be down for a couple of hours with no ill effects, you may be
better off with an off-the-shelf solution. If two minutes' downtime
means two lost customers, you need complex hosting.
Remember,
you can get in touch with us any time to discuss your needs without
obligation. Our reputation is important to us and we will not 'upsell'
you to an expensive solution that you don't really need.
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Unless
you specifically ask us for email and/or web space, or they are part of
the off-the-shelf package you've ordered, they won't be provided when
you register a domain name. Registering a domain just gives you the
right to use that domain. Email and web space are specific services
that have to be provided, not an integral part of a domain.
The answer to the next question may be helpful.
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It's
important to remember that domain name registration, web space and
email are separate services. They are all associated with your domain,
but technically and commercially they are separate.
The
concepts are a bit abstract, so let's make them concrete. If we think
of the internet as being like a high street where you want to set up
shop, domain names are like signs, web space is like premises and email
addresses are like mailboxes.
When you create your online
presence you first buy a domain name, which is like buying a sign. On
the street, some signs are over shops and some point to another
location. In the same way, your domain name can point to your own
space, or it can point elsewhere. Some domain names just point to other
domains. Businesses sometimes use extra domains to make sure they pick
up visitors who have guessed their domain name wrongly. The extra
domains are just 'signs', they have no 'premises' under them.
The
next step is to get web space, which is like renting premises. Until
you do this, you have nowhere to set up shop, just a 'sign'. Once you
have 'premises', you can put the 'sign' over the door by making your
domain name point to your web space.
Finally, you can also
have email. This is like fixing a 'mailbox' under the 'sign' - people
can now send letters to you. You can have as many mailboxes as you want
- one for each person in your company.
Note that you don't
have to have web space to have email. You could just have a domain and
email addresses. You would then have a 'sign' and a 'mailbox', but no
'premises'. Sole traders who want a distinctive email address, but
don't need their own site, often do this.
You can get a
domain name and web space without having email if you really want,
although the vast majority of businesses have emails associated with
their domains. You cannot have an email account without buying a
domain, unless you are happy with having your 'mailbox' under someone
else's 'sign' (by using a Hotmail or AOL address, for example).
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A
hit is a request for a file, received and handled by a web server.
Loading a single web page typically involves several hits - for the
text, images, functionality and so on. The number of hits at a website
provides a useful measure of the work being done by the hosting
machine, the capacity required to host the site and the bandwidth
required to make it available.
A visit is a series of
interactions by a single visitor to a site, within a set period. Each
visit involves viewing a series of pages, numbering from one to
potentially hundreds, and will naturally involve a number of hits,
perhaps thousands. The number of visits to a website provides a useful
measure of its popularity in business terms, as opposed to its
bandwidth comsumption.
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No,
the servers we use are owned by disk-space experts Rackspace and
located in the US. Rackspace provide the physical computers and the
connection to the internet, which is extremely fast. We provide the
technical expertise to set up and manage all aspects of a domain and
keep them running smoothly, plus the service and support element of the
hosting package.
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There's
a big difference between hiring infrastructure and subscribing to a
service. One means taking on new worries, the other means forgetting
them. When you move house, you can rent a van or use a removal service.
It depends how much effort you want to put in. Where do you want your
business's efforts to go?
Professionals know that to get
professional results, you engage a professional. Business people
understand that real value for money is long-term and big-picture.
Managing hosting effectively requires a wide range of technical skills
and it rarely makes sense to have those skills in-house (or do without
them).
People who work with competent, experienced,
customer-focused hosting companies sometimes form the impression that
hosting is easy or requires no effort. This is because good hosting
companies shield their clients from day-to-day problems, just as good
couriers or accountants do.
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Although
it can seem strange, physical distances have no impact on online access
times. It's all about the speed of the connection from the server to
the main 'arteries' of the internet. It could well be slower to access
a server next door than one on the other side of the world.
Our
ability to manage our servers isn't affected by distance either. As we
look at our screens, it's as if we were sitting in front of the actual
machine.
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Firstly,
read the small print. Many 'cheap' hosting packages are short on
features and flexibility, adding banner advertising to your site or
locking you into a particular configuration for years.
Secondly,
consider what infrastructure can be provided by a company that receives
so little revenue from each of its customers. Lower prices mean lower
investment, perhaps even insecurity in the business itself. What
assurances do you have about the level of service, or the health of the
company?
Now apply the same reasoning to customer service.
The fee you pay somehow has to cover the people you deal with, as well
as the service itself. Are you likely to get phone and email support,
proactive troubleshooting and friendly advice whenever you need it?
What is actually guaranteed?
If you still feel that
rock-bottom hosting is right for your business, there are plenty of
economy packages out there. Of you could choose a professional service
that's carefully designed around your actual business needs, not
squeezed into an eye-catching price point. It's your decision.
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Unfortunately not. Our servers run RedHat Linux and we create our programming solutions in PHP.
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