Hosting
What Is Hosting? – A Layman’s Terms Analagy
Website Hosting is something that is required for all websites to be visible on the internet, but a lot of people don’t understand what it is and therefore why they need it. As such hosting is often viewed as a hidden cost. So what follows is very much a layman’s terms description of hosting.
Our hosting service includes:
100% UK based servers
99.99% u-ptime
Daily back-ups of all websites hosted
Friendly support by phone and email
Fair & transparent pricing
What Is Website Hosting?
Imagine a book shop that everyone in the world can visit. If you write a book you want people to read it so you go to the book shop and ask the owner if you can put your book on a shelf in the shop. The owner will let you but they will charge you a fee for taking up space on the shelf. This is basically the same concept as hosting.
The internet is a global network of computers all connected together via cables, radio waves (wireless radio connections) and satellite links – i.e. the bookshop.
Websites are databases of information – i.e. your book.
Servers are the shelves in the book shop where you can place your book / website for all to see.
Website Hosting is the service the book shop owner provides whereby they will charge you a fee to take up space on the shelf and they will keep the shelves clean, tidy and well stocked making sure your book is always available for anyone that wants it.
This really is a very basic description of website hosting but having been asked countless times for a layman’s terms definition, hopefully this helps. There is more information in the sections below about key aspects of hosting including how much it costs and how it works.
Hosting Costs
How much hosting costs is determined by the amount of space on a server that is required for the website. A website with one or two pages takes up a lot less space than a website with ten or twenty pages. An online shop with hundreds of products takes up less space than an online shop with thousands of products.
Our Website Hosting starts at £50 per year for a website requiring 2Gb of server space. 2Gb is usually sufficient for most standard brochure websites, i.e. websites with a fairly small number of pages that contain words and images.
Example: If your website has 10 pages with writing and images on each page and you are not capturing and storing customer information onto the site, 2Gb should be fine. If your website is an e-Commerce website with 1,000 products, dozens of pages of additional content and you are capturing lots of customer information onto the site, the website will need more than 2Gb. When we scope the project with you and write a proposal, we will include a cost for the hosting package that you will need.
Hosting Providers Server Location
There are Hosting providers all over the world and before you sign up to a hosting service, it’s important to know where your hosts servers are. It is generally best practice to host your website on a server in the same country as your target audience. In other words, if all of your potential customers are in the UK, you are better off using a UK hosting service. There are a few reasons for this;
- Speed. Imagine a cable running from your customers computer to your website hosts server. The longer the cable the longer it takes to send and receive information and this can impact the load time of a website. No one really wants to sit around waiting for a web page to open. Also, search engines like Google monitor websites load time and prioritise websites with faster load times over slower load times, in their search results list.
- Hosting set up. If your website uses a generic top-level domain like .com or .org, search engines do not automatically know where the website is based, unlike a site with a local top-level domain like .co.uk. It is very important to set up hosting correctly by specifying the target country, i.e. the country where your customers are. This setting is often overlooked by website managers and this can negatively impact a websites visibility.
All of our UK based websites targeting customers in the UK are hosted on servers in the UK.
We work with highly respected and experienced partners overseas to provide appropriate hosting to clients outside of the UK, or targeting overseas customers.
Hosting Providers Server Resilience
You rely on your hosting provider to provide a fast, efficient, secure and robust service. This does not just mean how quick do they answer the phone when you want to speak to them, it also means how secure is the server the website sits on. Hackers spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to break into websites and access to a poorly protected website server is an open door to your website.
If there are technical problems with your hosts server (and given the ever changing nature of computer technology no server is guaranteed to run without problems), how does your hosting provider respond?
Our hosting service includes:
100% UK based servers
99.99% u-ptime
Daily back-ups of all websites hosted
Friendly support by phone and email
Fair & transparent pricing
To find out more about how we can help you with a new website or refreshing an existing site:
Call us on 01273 726989
Email us at info@niftywebsitedesign.co.uk
or complete the Quick Contact Form below and we will come back to you asap.
If you are in or around Brighton & Hove we can meet for a coffee or if you’re further afield we can call, Skype of FaceTime. There is no commitment at this stage, we’ll just talk about what you are trying to achieve and we’ll tell you how we can help. If you would like to know more before you call, choose from the options below or in the main menu at the top of the page.
Get In Touch
Call us on 01273 726989, email us at info@niftywebsitedesign.co.uk or submit the Quick Contact Form and we will come back to you asap.
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"nifty website designers have helped our company to take off at a speed we could not have anticipated. They have shown saint like patience with the little understanding we have with the workings of websites and internet marketing in general. They have worked and been readily on call at weekends and late into the evening and their enthusiasm for the project was inspiring. I would highly recommend them to any company be it a start-up or a mature operation.”