Web hosting? What’s that?

Put simply a web host (or a provider of web hosting if you will) is an individual or organisation who provide the things (technologies and services) you need in order to put your website(s) or web applications on the internet.

Your website will live on a server (this could be one actual computer or a virtual server which spans multiple computers) and when people type in your domain name, internet wizardry sends them to your site that is hosted on this server. Your domain name is tied (not literally) to that servers address. 

The web hosts job is to provide that infrastructure and ensure that it is up and running so that none of your visitors are disappointed when then come to your site.

What Should I Look For In A Host? 

You should look for 3 things.

• Server speed – No matter how good your website, how well optimised or how tiny your images, if your host is slow, your site will be slow. Get a host with good speed and if you are going to need a cache for performance purposes, try and get a host with a dedicated integration with something like Cloudflare.
• Availability – If your server is offline, it can’t be serving your site to visitors and down website make people trust your competence and your trustworthiness. Look for at least 99.99% up time guarantee.
• Support – If you can’t get hold of someone when you have a problem, who is going to help you? Go with someone that can support your needs and walk you through any issues you might have. If you don’t want to have to deal with problems, consider taking someone like TECHNOVORE on who can look after your site, server and even be your in-house IT person (all without the need to have an actual person sat in your office!)

Conclusion

There are millions of web hosts, some good, some great, some truly awful. If you aren’t sure where to start, why not contact us and we can help you cut through the nonsense and find a solution that will fit your needs.