Digital Stax Web Design Blog » web hosting

What is web hosting?

Raymond — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:47:18 +0000

I was talking to a friend the other day who isn’t as consumed with “all things Web-related” as I am and she made an interesting comment: “Maybe a lot of people have no idea what web hosting is?” The thought never occurred to me. Sometimes my mind doesn’t think like non-techies and for this I am sorry. So, here’s a brief explanation of what web hosting is and why you need it.

When a website owner purchases web hosting, they are paying for the right to store their website files on a computer (called a server) at a remote location. This allows your website files to be accessed by people using the Internet. The web host also handles all of the technical aspects of installing necessary software on the server and making sure that the server is working 24 hours a day.

It’s similar to how some antique stores or flea markets work on a consignment basis. If you wanted to sell your antiques, you could rent out a booth in an already established antique store. You wouldn’t have to worry about utility bills, building maintenance, or any of the other concerns that arise when you own a building. This is what you are doing when you sign up for a web hosting account. It might be very expensive and time-consuming to set up your own server and have to deal with everything involved with that.

I hope this makes sense. If not, click on the “Contact” button above and ask away.

Digital Stax now offers domain registration and web hosting!

Raymond — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:32:15 +0000

I’m excited to announce that we’re now offering domain name registration and web hosting services. You can use our online portal to purchase these products and find out more.

Each of our hosting accounts include the following:

No setup Fees!
99.9% Uptime
Blog, Forum, E-Commerce, and many other FREE software packages included!
CGI
PHP 5 with Zend Optimizer
MySQL 4+
Perl
Ruby On Rails
Python
SSH
SSI
Cron
FrontPage
Curl
GD
Image Magick
Free PHP/Perl Module Installation

Can your hosting provider affect your site’s search engine ranking?

Raymond — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:55:00 +0000

Thanks for asking that question, Raymond. The answer is a resounding…”Most definitely quite possible” Choosing the right hosting provider is something that is often forgot about when delving into the world of search engine optimization (SEO). You may spend hours and hours configuring your site to be the search engine friendliest that it can be, but when Googlebot makes it rounds and your website is slow or not responsive, your web host could become a major obstacle in your attempt at scaling Mt. Google.

In David Viney’s book, Get to the Top on Google, he reveals that Google tracks what is called “timed-out_queries_total”. Although it is not known for sure why they track this variable, the logical conclusion is that this is factored into how Google ranks the importance of websites. When a site performs poorly in this area, it is perceived to be a low quality site without much importance. Having a poor hosting provider could very well have a negative impact on your Google ranking. And it also doesn’t encourage users to frequent your site if the pages load slowly or they constantly receive server error messages.

The best advice is to choose a hosting provider that has been around the block for a while. New hosting companies turn up every day and many bite the bullet every day too. Many of these providers over-sell their technical capabilities and thus under-perform when you need them most.

Check out Internet forums, such as Web Hosting Talk, and find out which hosting companies to avoid and which have a proven track record. Ask fellow webmasters what hosting providers they use to help you make your decision. Make this decision carefully because it could be one of the more important SEO moves that you make.