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Web Podcast - Episode 4: Website hosting tips & advice

RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast - find out how you can utilise the web to sell more products and services - with helpful, expert advice from Matt Reid.

Go into detail behind the basics from setting up a website - to how to drive customers through the sales process & make your website work for you!



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Read the transcription of this podcast:

So today we will go into detail about hosting.

You have a domain name which is telling people what we are called and how to get to us, then we have hosting and that serves the website to the person wanting to view it.

Hosting is a computer somewhere that ha the website on it. When someone types your website in on Google then clicks it. That means it will load your website from the server.

You’re paying for space on a computer built for websites.

There’s lots of little things you get with hosting. You can get emails, you can do databases if you require.
It’s important to find the right hosting package.

If you’re doing the site yourself and you’re using Wordpress you will have to make sure your server supports PHP and MySQL databases, there are quite a few different server types you can get. Like an ASP Microsoft server, PHP Linux web server, Apache servers. There’s a lot of different one that you can get.

Most of the main companies will always give you the right set up. You’ve still got to be aware, you have to check that whatever your site is coded in, it’s supported by that hosting company.

If you’re using a web design company you shouldn’t have to worry about it. They should do it all for you, thats the purpose of a web design company, they’ll look after you. You don’t have to know anything about it.
If you’re doing it yourself, make sure you know what you’re doing.

Cheapest hosting is cheap for a reason. It’s usually useless, slow, bad support, the back end panel is basic. So it’s important you get the hosting right in terms of who you go with and the cost. Like everything you get what you pay for.
If you use a good, not small but not massive hosting company that gives you 99 cent per month plans, that’s good.

You need a company that gives you good support, good space, good bandwidth, and who will not charge you for a little extras.

A lot of these big hosting companies charge 99 cents but then everything else is a premium to have as an extra. At the end of the day you pay more for a worse quality product. Be careful with who you pick for your hosting.

Summarising it, pick a host that gives you everything that you require for your website. If you’re using Wordpress make sure it’s PHP, has a MySQL database and other things like that.

If you have a web design company doing it just check with them who they will host it with. Check if it’s hosted overseas because if it is then it’s going to be slower.

Those are the sports of things you need to ask people when building the website.

Don’t get ripped off, but don’t go for the cheapest deal. You’ll have to pay extra for everything else.

Hosting is very important, it compliments your domain name and it’s the basic foundation of getting your website online.

To be honest, Google is such a complicated system to figure out in terms of SEO it’s going to be more beneficial to have a fast website than a slower one. You will have the potential to get better ranking benefits with a faster website.

Thats episode four of the RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast, and join us again next time, I hope you enjoyed the show. Cheers.