While many people are familiar with the Internet, some are not familiar with hosting.\u00a0 I would like to address some of the concerns and questions about hosting, hopefully without being too obvious for those of you who are already familiar with the concept.<\/p>\n
So first, what is hosting?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n Here are a few things that technically aren\u2019t hosting: <\/strong><\/p>\n Second, what kinds of hosting are available?<\/strong><\/p>\n Some website developers (such as myself) offer hosting through a national company and pay the overhead themselves.\u00a0 Other companies, including developers, have their own private servers (like the one Hillary Clinton is now famous for having had at her house).\u00a0 This means that the hosting is physically located somewhere in their office or on their property.\u00a0 This can be risky, as the protection for such equipment cannot match the larger \u201cserver farm\u201d installations.\u00a0 If you have a website you need to prepare for disaster\u2014which not surprisingly is called disaster recovery.\u00a0 Some of the potential disasters that these places plan for are fire, electrical outages, hackers, computer hardware failure, vandalism, theft, and loss of Internet connectivity.<\/p>\n There is a middle ground as well which is called \u201cco-location\u201d.\u00a0 This is where I might own a server but keep it at a server farm or other Internet service provider with the understanding that they do not touch it unless I authorize it.\u00a0 This means that I am responsible for hardware failures, software updates, and the rest of the things that server companies handle for you normally.\u00a0 Some companies use co-location as a way to reduce some of the physical risks and save money on the maintenance plan fees.<\/p>\n If I need a shopping cart, is the hosting plan different?<\/strong><\/p>\n In a word, yes.\u00a0 Companies that offer e-commerce solutions must be able to provide secure (SSL) connectivity to the financial institutions that process payments.\u00a0 An e-commerce hosting solution is different because:<\/p>\n What about bandwidth?<\/strong><\/p>\n Most of my clients are not large enough to warrant a surcharge for bandwidth.\u00a0 If you shop around, you will find many companies that are quite concerned with how many visitors you might have and how much data you might be transferring (for example, are you a video-oriented site?).\u00a0 If you are a startup, you may have no idea how much bandwidth you need.\u00a0 It is a simple matter of talking to your hosting provider to get an estimate of what the limits are and what fees would be if your needs were to grow.<\/p>\n Final thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n When you choose your hosting provider, make sure to ask the questions you might ask when you are leasing a car: When can I have it?\u00a0 How safe is it? \u00a0What is the monthly payment?\u00a0 Can I trade it in?\u00a0 What happens if I miss a payment?\u00a0 Can you repair it if I get into a crash?\u00a0 What would that cost?\u00a0 Do you have a loaner vehicle?\u00a0 What happens if I go over my mileage limit?\u00a0 There are many other such questions, but you get the idea.\u00a0 Consider something you are familiar with, and then apply your experience in that area to the decision of where to get hosting.\u00a0 I am always interested in speaking with potential new clients, regardless of whether they already have hosting.\u00a0 Feel free to leave any interesting experiences you have had with hosting or questions in the comments section below.<\/p>\n Henry Lyons is the owner of Finestkind Web Design<\/strong> in Dresden, Maine. He can be reached at finestkindwd@gmail.com, or through his website www.fineskindwebdesign.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While many people are familiar with the Internet, some are not familiar with hosting.\u00a0 I would like to address some of the concerns and questions about hosting, hopefully without being too obvious for those of you who are already familiar with the concept. So first, what is hosting?\u00a0 It is the place where you keep … Continue reading “What Is Hosting?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6],"tags":[7,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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