This isn’t the glamorous part of building a website, or the creative bit.
It can be great fun picking a domain name- although frustrating when that name isn’t available. Designing a website is a real labor of love, but not boring either, and when you’re finished you can be proud of your creative efforts. Writing great content is also all part of the fun of making a great website.
However, a catchy name, great content, and a fabulous design means very little if the server you’re hosting on isn’t up to scratch.
How many of us nowadays would wait an age while a website loads?
Most internet users have such short attention spans that they will click off in minutes if a website takes too long to gear up.
It’s not fun and it’s not creative, but picking a quality server is all part of the process of building a website that works well for you. A good server will make sure the use of your website is streamlined for whoever is using it.
Here are the most popular types of web hosting services:
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the cheapest and most popular type of web hosting.
It also comes with a lot of flaws, but there are advantages too.
If your project is small and personal, and you don’t foresee rapid expansion in the future, a shared server can work fine.
You share space on a server with many other different clients, so you will be limited by sharing things like bandwidth and storage space with them.
A benefit is even the cheapest of packages often include a decent content management service, like WordPress, which can be useful if that’s all you really need.
However, if you plan to expand it can be a huge problem. Someone else on your server could have already dominated the space you need to grow your website. It also means if someone else is claiming too much space your site is liable to crash without much pressure.
If this is for something personal and small, it should be fine. If you’re going big, aim a little higher.
VPS Hosting
Now for something a little more powerful.
VPS Hosting is quite similar to Shared Hosting, except it has an advantage on the free-for-all of shared.
VPS comes with a built in “wall”; so, your neighbors can’t expand outside their wall into yours.
The server will be split among say ten users, who all are allocated 10% of the server space.
The problem lies in if your looking to expand. If your sites RAM limit hits your “wall”, your website can go down. If you’re looking to go bigger, you’re going to have to pay a little more.
Dedicated Server Hosting
SPACE!
That is one thing dedicated server hosting offers. It’s an expensive option, but you get to have a server all to yourself. Because it’s just your own, companies often offer a range of options which allows you to customize the server to your specific needs.
The thing is, you have to be confident that you know enough about server technology. There’s a lot more self-management with this kind, and if something goes wrong, often the onus is on you to fix it.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud based hosting is often very similar to VPS, and is fast becoming one of the most popular server options.
Instead of connecting to just one server, your resources come from multiple servers on a network.
Cloud based hosting also offers the greatest protection again DDOS attacks. With your function spread across a range of different servers, it’s harder to take a website down.
A cloud based hosting allows great expansion too, if that’s what you’re interested in.
Reseller Hosting
This normally involves a web design company who have access to a server space renting it to a client they build a website for. It’s become scarcer, but it’s a convenient way to make sure the person intimately involved in a website’s design is invested in the mechanics.
If you’re still curious about specific companies, these UK web hosting reviews on MangoMatter should help you find your way.
Find the perfect server- develop your perfect website.
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