What is 'hosting' all about then?
Your website has to be 'hosted' on a computer which is always switched on, and always connected to the internet. Computers that host web sites are called 'web servers' - they serve up your web pages to your website's visitors. There are many hosting companies who will allow you to rent space on one of their computers ('shared hosting'), or even to use an entire computer to yourself ('dedicated hosting').
Your internet service provider (ISP) - that is, the company that connects you to the internet - may offer you some space on one of their web servers for free. If your website is not absolutely critical to your business, and you don't expect a large number of visitors, this might be adequate for you. However, if there are any problems with the site, you might not be able to do anything about it - you can't exactly demand your money back! There will also be restrictions on what your website can do if you choose a free hosting service.
For the best results, you will need to pay for hosting on either a 'shared' or 'dedicated' server. Paid hosting usually means much better performance (your website will run faster), more 'uptime' (your website will rarely, if ever, be unavailable), and better support if anything goes wrong. A dedicated server offers the best performance, but can be very expensive. A shared server means that you are sharing the server's resources with other websites (and all of their visitors), so performance may suffer a little, but the price will be much lower.
Netshine Software is able to arrange low cost hosting for you because we run our own dedicated servers on which we can host our clients' accounts. Hosting with us also gives us control over your website environment, which means we can install software (such as Joomla) for you and we are more likely to be able to fix any problems quickly.
Domains
For anybody to find a web page on the internet, they need to know the 'address' of the web page. Every single web page on the entire internet has to have a unique address. With the many billions of web pages that exist on the internet, these addresses have to be organized in such a way that nobody can use an address that is already being used by someone else.
Rather than having to check every single address for every page you want to publish on the internet, you register a 'domain'. A domain is only a part of the web address for all of your pages, but as long as all of your web page addresses start with that domain name, nobody else can use those addresses.
The website you are looking at right now is published on the domain: netshinesoftware.com - so all of the web pages on this site start with that domain name. When someone types in www. followed by your domain name in their web browser, they are taken to your 'home page' - which is like a front cover for your website. It is therefore best to try to register a domain name which is easy to remember, and related to your business, so that your customers will have no trouble finding it.
To register a domain name, you have to pay a fee to a registrar - usually you have to renew (and pay again!) once every year or two, but the length of time can vary depending on the registrar. The amount of the fee depends on the domain name you choose, and the country in which the registrar is located.
If you do not already have a domain name, we can help you select an appropriate name which has not already been taken, and register it with a low-cost registrar. If required, we can also renew the registration on your behalf whenever it is due. If you host your website with us, we provide a free .uk domain name.
