Internet Advice #3

Website Hosting

Hosting a website involves various important factors, each of which are crucial to the overall success.

Key factors include:

• the websites functionality - the range of features that it offers, the way in which it projects its content to the user, and how the content is kept fresh and up to date.
• the performance of the website - the overall speed at which it loads its pages and responds to any user requests.
• the reliability of the website - the level of availability of the website and how regularly it suffers from down time.

Functionality

The functionality of a website is hugely dependent upon the software that was used to build it and then maintain it. An advantage is to have in-house software expertise but otherwise you will probably need advice from your internet service provider or website designer.

Performance

An necessity for your website is that it will need a fast internet connection. This is determined by the bandwidth that is available; this is the amount of data that can be transmitted and received by an internet connection. If your connection is not fast enough, users will only be able to access your webpages slowly - particularly if many users are trying to access your site at the same time (which is the aim of most websites). Most external hosting companies refer to this as the 'backbone' - the speed of connection into their servers.,

The website will require a web server of some sort. Depending on your site requirements (amount of traffic etc.) you will need to either go for a dedicated server (only your site is hosted on the machine) or a shared hosting service where you share the server box with other websites. The shared service can have a damaging effects on the speed and availability of your website. The individual specification of the web server will also be a factor in the performance of the website. You must also consider processor speed and the disk space needed for the website to function efficiently.

Reliability

Your website should be available 24 hours a day - you will need to maintain and support it unless you have opted for your web design agency to do this for you in which case you need to choose a reliable team. The more you rely on your website, the less you can afford to wait until the following morning until you are able to fix any critical problems and restore the website. Most hosting companies have a 24 hour support line and this is often why web design agencies often use specific hosting companies as a third party. The added advantage of client support around the clock, that they might not be able to offer otherwise.

Security is an ongoing concern on the internet, especially for E-commerce websites (online shops). IKt is important that any hosting solution you choose, should be able to demonstrate that it is secure and able to withstand hackers, fraudsters and any online service attack.

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