Website Hosting 

Website hosting is where your website lives on the Internet. For your website to appear on the Internet it needs to be uploaded to a server. Servers are high-tech computers storing all the components that make up a website, such as HTML documents, CSS stylesheets, and images. These servers are connected to the internet so when someone enters a search query into an internet browser, such as Google Chrome, that browser will then connect to various servers to find websites that contain information relevant to the search query.

Think of hosting as finding a house for your website to live in. You need to move all the building blocks of your website to a secure server so that when someone wants to visit, i.e. types your website into Google, browsers will know where to find you.

Managed website hosting is when someone else manages the server that your website is on for you. This is usually taken care of by a dedicated and trained individual, allowing for regular updates and maintenance, security, monitoring activity and backing up your website.

Hiring a website hosting service provider to manage your hosting environment will ensure that your website is fully secure twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If anything were to happen to your website, they will be able to restore it to its original state by performing regular backups. Maintenance and updates will help your website run as smoothly as possible so that your customers get the best experience when using your website.

Contact us today to discuss our managed website hosting services.

Shared website hosting means that your website shares its server with other websites. This is usually a cheaper option when comparing the types of website hosting, as you are only paying for a small portion of one server and splitting the cost of the whole server with other companies who are sharing your space.

Whilst this is a cheaper option, it does mean that your website will have to compete with other websites for resources. This could impact your page loading speed and your uptime. Having to compete with other websites for the same resources could impact that experience that visitors to your website have. Shared website hosting is not usually recommended for a website with a high traffic rate as your website may not be able to function as properly as it should.

Even though you are sharing a server with other websites, you will not have access to their files, and vice versa.

The answer to this completely depends on your website and the resources you need to keep it running at its optimum. If you have a simple one-page website with low traffic rates, shared hosting will probably be the best option for you. This is because you will not need as many resources as a multi-page, more complex website that gets more traffic.

If, and when, your website grows, you can always transfer your website hosting to a different service that meets the new needs of your website. Choosing the best website hosting service for your website also depends on cost. If you want someone to look after your hosting for you, then managed website hosting should be an option that you consider.

You can get in contact with us and speak to a member of our website hosting team. We will be able to help advise on the best hosting service for your website.

If you feel that you are not getting the hosting services that your website needs, you can transfer to a different website hosting provider. Transferring your website to a different hosting server can be a tricky process, depending on how complex your website is. Most websites involve content management systems and complex databases as well as the files that hold the code. All these files and data need to be transferred in a way that allows your website to continue working as normal, so that any visitors to your website will not know that anything has changed.

If you would like to transfer your website hosting, please get in contact and speak to a member of our team to discuss your options.

How much your website hosting costs completely depends on the type of hosting you choose and which service provider you use. Most web hosting companies will charge you a monthly or annual fee to use their servers for your website.

Shared hosting is the cheapest option as you are sharing a server with other websites. You only pay for a small portion of it, rather than renting the whole thing. Dedicated website hosting is the most expensive type of hosting as you are renting the whole server just for your website, so there are no other companies to split the cost with. The cost of cloud hosting can depend on how many servers you need to rent and what resources you need to keep your website functioning at its optimum.

Most website hosting providers offer the option of managed website hosting in their monthly or annual fees. This will take the hassle away from you of having to keep your website updated and running at its optimum.

Before deciding on your website hosting service provider, make sure that what you are paying for is right for your website. Please get in contact to discuss our website hosting fees.

Cloud website hosting means that your website is hosted on more than one web server. It also means that your website information and data is stored virtually rather than in a physical server.

By using resources from various servers, if one of the servers is down or at maximum capacity, another server can take over. This allows your website to stay up and running online as smoothly as possible for your customers. Using a cloud-based server can also help to increase your loading speed as you are not relying on just one server that is also trying to load multiple other websites. The different servers that your website is stored on will all be able to help load your website faster.

With most cloud-based website hosting solutions, you only pay for what you need. If you see a rise in traffic to your website, you can increase your resources. This stops you paying for a bigger hosting package that may include resources that you do not need, just to get access to the ones that you do.

A website backup is a copy of all the files and databases that make up your website. There are a few common reasons why you would need a backup to restore your website. Maybe you tried to update a plugin or core file that causes your website to break, or maybe your website gets hacked. You need to backup your website so that if something were to happen to it, you can easily restore the site to the most recent version.

The more frequently you add new content to your website, the more frequently you need to create backups. If you add new content, such as blog posts or new products to an ecommerce site, but do not have a recent backup, then you will lose all the new content and will have to reupload it all manually. Not only is this a time consuming process, but it will also impact what people can see and interact with on your site. If you have an ecommerce website, it could cost you sales as the latest products will be lost from the site.

Even the most simple of websites will have lots of important information, files and databases that need to be backed up. If you do not create a backup at all and something happens to your website then you will have to start over from scratch. All of the hard work you put into building your website and establishing your online presence will be gone.

With a maintenance package from Digital Whitebox, regular backups will be included in the price, so that you can rest assured that your website will always be showing it’s most recent version. You can contact us to enquire about our maintenance packages and find out how we can help you keep your website running as it should be.