Category Archives: Shared Hosting

Domain Name Servers: How Do They Affect Your Website?

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I want you to imagine something. I want you to consider how many websites exist in the world today. There have to be thousands, right? Noooo, way more than that! Millions! Millions of different websites that can be accessed today. Now, think about how you access them. You don’t type a whole bunch of random numbers into your computer and hope that the right website comes up. That is ludicrous! And I know that we certainly are not capable of storing millions of different IP addresses in our minds, being able to access the ones that we need at will. That, again, is ludicrous. So how, then, are we able to access the various results of web hosting world wide? The answer is simple: DNS.

Web hosting, and in particular dns hosting, is very essential for the existence of the internet. Without DNS hosting, the internet could exist, but it would be almost unnavigable. Essentially DNS stands for Domain Name Servers, and they are what allow you to access the web sites that you need. DNS servers were in a hierarchical manner, with 13 main servers existing worldwide that contain every single website in the world. Servers below these don’t contain as many names, and the lower down the hierarchy, the less names the server will know.

So how do they work? Well, imagine that your website is located on some specific dedicated servers. It has an IP address, an allocation of seemingly random numbers that humans don’t really tend to understand well. So how do people find your website? Well, located on a DNS server somewhere will be the name of your website, and right beside it, the IP address that corresponds to it. Suddenly your dedicated servers went from being nameless numbers to something that we can understand! This is what DNS is!

Essentially, without DNS, people would never find your website. It’s like if you’re learning a new language. You don’t know what certain words mean, but you need to find out, because they are very important for you. So what do you do? Well, any sane man would consult a dictionary, first of all (or in this day jump on Google translate). This is the exact same thing as your web browser querying a DNS server, asking it what this name means, in the language that it speaks, which being a computer is numbers! So essentially DNS servers are huge dictionaries that allow your computers and the millions of other computers in the world to find your website, and without these DNS servers, your website would be almost useless. You can see how important they are!

All in all, DNS servers do more than just take extra bandwidth and space. They allow the internet to be what it is today. They allow it to be fast and efficient and organized, and if DNS servers didn’t exist, the internet would be almost unusable! As such, be sure to make sure that your website is registered in the DNS server of your internet provider, or you’ll never get any visitors.

Things to Consider When Setting Up Your Website

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Advertising is quite possibly the single most important aspect of running your business. You can’t run a business without customers, and without advertising, nobody will ever know that you exist. This is why it is so important to get your name out as quickly, cheaply, and effectively as is humanly possible. After all, there are millions and millions of people online, each with the possibility of seeing your very own business web page.
However, hosting a website can come with a lot of complications, and being your own website designer may not be the best idea. You see, there used to be a time when it was perfectly acceptable and ok for a person to make his or her own web page. In fact, this is still a perfectly reasonable alternative, if you are willing to invest the considerable amount of time it takes to learn how to make a website. However, hiring a professional website designer may be infinitely better than doing it on your own, and there are really good reasons for this.

Have you ever been searching the net and suddenly stumbled upon a webpage with a single colour background, and perhaps some random pictures with text going down the middle? This is probably what your website will look like if you do it yourself. As such, although hiring professionals to make your webpage will cost you money in the beginning, it will ultimately bring your more money in the end. This is because they are, after all, professionals. Just make sure that you choose a reputable company who isn’t there to just take your money.
Of course, these days, most web host will provide a free website builder or web designing tool for their customers. Through an intuitive interface, you can have your own professional-looking website without any programming knowledge. All the graphics, design and layouts are done for you. All you have to to is to upload your content. How easy is that?
Looking for a web hosting company these days isn’t hard.. What can be difficult is finding a good one. When you are looking for a server company, ask them a few questions. Are they going to do all of the maintenance? How old are their servers? How many websites do they generally run off of each server? Any more than 250 and you should walk away, even if you plan to get a dedicated one. If they rip their other customers off like this, what will they do to you? As well, you should ask them what kind of insurance they have on their equipment, and how often it is given maintenance.
A good server company will help you make sure that your website is suited for the specific type of server that you want (which is also why you need to hire professional webpage designers) so that your site runs smoothly and efficiently. Once you have chosen the company that you want, and matched the website, and found that it’s ok, it’s time to get it all up and running! Load the webpage and information onto the server, and start advertising to the world that you are here, and here to stay!

When Should Your Business Get a Managed Server?

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There inevitably comes a time in every business’ life that it needs to begin paying for someone to manage managed services for its website. This may be construed as a bad thing, but it’s actually something very good! This shows that the business is in fact growing so much that they can’t keep control of their website, and that their current server settings cannot handle the traffic of everyone visiting its website.

So, when should one consider getting managed services? Or better yet, what kind of web hosting should the business choose? These are both questions that need to be asked, especially if the first question is already answered by the business! However, in general, a business should begin to pay for a second party to manage their servers if the business website can no longer handle the volume of traffic and if the business no longer is able to or wants to devote enough time to manage and control it itself. The second question, the one concerning the type of web hosting a business should get, is the more difficult to answer. So, what are the best types of hosting available?

The main types are as follows: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS, and cloud. The first, shared hosting is the cheapest. This may be the type you want if you do not require a lot of control over the settings on the server, such as the format of it. It is one of the most popular kinds because it is so cheap, but it certainly does have its limitations. It’s like renting a room from somebody. You can live there and sleep there, but you have to share the kitchen, and share the washroom, and every other part of the house, and you’re always going to be running into other foot traffic inside.

The second kind of hosting are called dedicated servers. These are the most expensive type of hosting, and this is because you are renting an entire server for yourself, your one website. This is not recommended for smaller businesses but only for large ones with very specific needs for their website. You can liken it to renting a very large house in a great area of the suburbs, perhaps. You have no one to share it with you, and you can do whatever you want to the house to personalize it.

The third is VPS, which means that it is virtual. It’s like renting an apartment. You all share the building, but you get all of the advantages of the dedicated server. This can be a great choice. Finally is the cloud, which is perhaps the most simple: you pay for as much as you use every month. Ultimately, knowing when to get a second party to manage your servers can be tricky, but if you want a website created or don’t want to manage one yourself anymore, hiring another business to do this for you can be a great idea, especially with the assortment of different choices.