Hosting overview

Web site hosting is the term used for storing the files for your web site on a secure purpose built remote computer. These computers are referred to as Web servers and their sole purpose is to make your website accessible to all 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

Every website needs to be hosted on a web server if it is to be accessible on the internet; the web server is usually rented on an annually basis, or even monthly depending on your preference.

• Part of the web servers job is to carry out actions sent to it from a users web browser, this enables us to use server specific languages to gather and process information that our web server picks up, this information includes;
• The number of visitors your web site receives each day, month or year.
• The keywords your visitors used in a search engine to find you.
• The pages that are most commonly viewed on your website.

This information can then be used to fine tune your website to ensure you get the most from it.

Your web site host server will also manage your email accounts and any other files or applications you may require, a database would be a typical example of an application that is run on a web server that can be used by a web site.

It should be noted however, that like all computers a web server can have its problems, this can mean a server has to be taken offline to be repaired for whatever reason. We believe it is important to ensure the web servers we use are regularly updated and secure from viruses and also malicious attacks from remote internet users.

When selecting hosting it is important to understand your own sites requirements; there are 2 things to consider, hard drive space and monthly Bandwidth.

For a small website that in total is less than 20Mb in files and images, 200Mb of hard drive space should be more than adequate, leaving 180Mb for saved emails. You only need server hard drive space to store your website and all its functions and then additional space for your email accounts.

Bandwidth on the other hand is slightly different, the bandwidth is the amount of space your site uses when providing your website information to your visitors. A page with an image of 1Mb visited and viewed by 1000 visitors in a month would make your monthly bandwidth usage approximately 1 GB. This is why it is important to optimise all images and content to minimum sizes to ensure maximum usage from the least amount of bandwidth space.