Your web site hosting will impact the speed, availability, reliability, confidentiality, security, and data integrity of your site. Your host will determine how quickly a technical problem is resolved and can also provide you with reports to monitor your web traffic and track your success. There are several different options for web hosting that you should be aware of.
You can host your site in your office on a computer that acts as a web server. This is a complicated solution that should not be attempted without a technical advisor and a minimum fractional T1 connection to the Internet. You will also need a technical person on staff to maintain the server and address any problems. This option should not be considered unless your web site is not mission critical. Having your server in house can be time consuming, labor intensive, less reliable and may end up being more expensive in the long run.
There are many different types of companies that offer web site hosting as one of their services. There are thousands of dial up ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) that also provide web hosting for businesses. These local, regional and national companies, such as AT&T, or the troubled MCI, make the bulk of their money from dial up access; web site hosting is not their core business.
Many web design firms are offering in house web site hosting to their clients. These web site designers/developers host their clients’ web pages on a computer in their office. This is usually done on a shared server although it can be on a server dedicated to one company’s web site. Some of the inherent problems with this arrangement are: not enough bandwidth to the Internet, lack of redundancy resulting in web site down time, insufficient technical support and little known search engine indexing problems. This option though not as reliable as having a professional hosting firm can be just as expensive.
If the web design/developer firm is accessing the Internet through a fractional T1 line and multiple requests are coming in for several different web sites on a shared server, the lack of bandwidth will affect the loading time of the requests. This would be similar to ten people calling your telephone number at once only one can get through at a time. The rest have to keep dialing and wait for the line to be free.
Most design/developer firms do not plan redundancy into their hosting options. If there is only one computer/server with your web site information, when that server experiences technical difficulties, needs routine maintenance, or if there is a building emergency such as fire or power outage, your site will not be available to your potential clients. This can result in missed opportunities or search engine indexing problems.
Many times the only technical support available from these firms is a single programmer wearing a beeper 24 hours a day. Can one tech person back up your files daily or keep a current back up copy off premises in case of a building emergency? If a problem occurs and the sole tech support person is not available, you won’t be able to resolve your problem. What if there is a technical problem the sole tech support cannot fix? These variables can result in extended poor web site performance or complete down time.
The practices of many web design/developer-hosting companies may adversely affect or even inhibit search engine indexing. Did you know many design firms resell virtual domain space on one server using the same IP address for each site? Since most search engines spider sites expecting to see a unique IP address, sharing IP addresses can cause a lower ranking or no ranking at all when they are first submitted to the engines. If a site on that IP address has been banned from the search engines for spamming or any other practice, this could cause all web sites hosted on that server with that IP address to be banned as well. If the search engine spiders are trying to index a site that is experiencing a lot of down time due to technical problems, the spider could report that it can’t find the site. This could cause a site that has not yet been listed to lose its chance to be listed or if the spider is re-indexing a site already in their engine, it may lose its listing.
Recently companies that specialize in web hosting for businesses are increasing in number. These companies provide a variety of web services to their customers like email boxes, daily backups, redundancy and web statistics reporting. Most offer both shared and dedicated hosting options. Shared hosting is sufficient for most web sites and starts at around $25 per month and goes up depending on space and functionality. Some web sites that have special security requirements, or a lot of functionality, or that receive a tremendous amount of visitors may require a dedicated server. This is an expensive option with hosting starting at about $500 per month and up depending on the site’s requirements.
Where you host your site is an important decision that will impact the performance of your site. Before signing a long term hosting contract assess your web site needs and determine the support necessary to accomplish your web site goals. Then chose the option that will enhance your site’s performance.
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Charlene Kurland
Director of Marketing
Arize Technology
410-486-1151