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Hosting solutions - brought to you by N - Web Design

Our hosting services and products

We offer fast, efficient and competitive Windows and Linux solutions for clients and as a stand alone product.

Unlike many hosting providers, we can offer a managed solution for your business, to help take the headache out of managing your web site, e-mail accounts and web hosting configuration.

If you need to register a domain name, host a web site or set up e-mail accounts, please contact us here. We can tailor a package for any requirement your business may need, whether you will manage it yourself, or you wish to take advantage of our cost-effective management service.

Hosting your web site and domain

Hosting your web site is a simple job. You select a provider, get your log-in details and upload your files.

We make is sound so simple, but the number of calls to support help lines and the number of questions on web hosting forums and news groups would suggest it isn't all that easy, especially for the novice or unfamiliar user.

We will offer some tips, tricks and techniques, designed to help choosing web hosting and domain names a little easier.

We will also tell you about our hosting solutions and what we can do for you.

Choosing a domain name

When the internet was first used, the choices for a domain name were very easy. Most conceivable names were available, plus the suffix options (.com, .co.uk) were very clear.

Now, it is more difficult to choose a domain name, but hopefully we can make it a little easier for you. Here are a few tips to help decide

  • Choose a region that best reflects you territory
  • Choose a suffix that represents your business intent
  • Limit your domain name to less than 20 characters
  • Choose a meaningful or memorable name
  • Incorporate you company name or acronym

Domain names are generally inexpensive, so you may choose more than one to represent your business interests. It may be prudent to select a few names and decide on which one will be your main domain name later on.

It is acceptable to hold a domain name and web hosting package with separate companies, but it is important that you are able to point any domain name you have at a web hosting account with a different provider.

Some registration agents offer cheap registration deals, but charge an additional fee to transfer your domain name away. Check that you can transfer your domain name for free to a new provider.

Choosing your hosting package

The choice of web hosting will depend entirely on your needs for web site content, e-mails and additional services.

If you have a static web site, a few employees and few visitors, your needs will be modest and a basic Linux based hosting package will suffice.

If you have a web site that will rely on database driven content, you need to make any decisions regarding how your web site will be built before selecting a hosting package.

If you have a large number of employees who all require e-mail addresses, you must ensure the hosting package you choose includes enough mailboxes for your needs. You can purchase accounts separately from your web hosting account to cover mailboxes if you wish to.

If you have a busy web site, checking your stats will indicate how much bandwidth you need for your web site. It is normally easy increase your bandwidth allowance on any web hosting package.

If you are proposing to run an e-commerce web site, you may need to incorporate special components or services to facilitate a payment system or verification process. You need to ensure that your hosting solution will provide you with the access you need to be flexible enough to incorporate special or non-standard requirements.

You may also need to utilise an SSL certificate for data encryption. Many hosting solutions will provide a shared certificate, but a dedicated certificate may be required. You need to ensure that an SSL certificate can be added, if neccessary, to your hosting account.

Will you be storing business critical data on a database in your website? If so, does your provider perform backups or allow for the provision of data backup solutions to be included in your hosting package. Note, an enterprise backup solution is likely to incur additional cost, but is often crucial for e-commerce web sites

Ensure, if needed,that you can point a domain name from a different hosting company to your chosen hosting account.

IF your business is just starting out on the internet, your needs may initially be modest, but as your business grows, so will your need for internet resources. Make sure that your web hosting solution provides easy upgrades of storage, bandwidth and e-mails as and when you need it.

Here is a summary of points to consider when choosing your web site hosting solution.

  • How much data will I need to store on my website?
  • Will I need to run server side scripting on my website?
  • Will I need access to a database for my website?
  • Do I need e-mail accounts and of so, how many
  • Is my website busy, and if so what bandwidth do I need?
  • Do I need an SSL certificate?
  • Can I manage my DNS entries from external hosting providers, to point at my domain?
  • What options are available for data backup and security?
  • Will my web hosting package grow with my business?

This is by no means everything you need to take into consideration when buying web hosting, but should allow you to highlight the key factors for a successful purchase. If you are working with a web designer, developer or I.T consultants, They will generally be able to ask all the right questions and arrive at the most appropriate solution for your business hosting needs.

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