BLOG: My web hosting journey! From novice to expert… some helpful information on what worked and what did not! Key Phrase/Question “the time that passes until your hosting is not working for you?” (Part of the www.top5hosting.co.uk web hosting survey)
Our web hosting experience at InTouch Rugby
10 years ago we had to transition from print media to online and we decided to make the move swiftly rather than in a tiered way over time. We believed that the future was online and that to make a go of it we had to focus on online media, make the transition 100% over 2 months and be up and running with a functioning media business online straight away from day 1.
We had a domain the InTouch Rugby domain and we had a skeleton of a blog type site and within 24hrs we had $10 a month hosting, a theme for our site layout so all the boxes on the front, social media accs and i was trained up in using a photoshop type software programme for image work and i was also within a day trained on “How to make a blog post appear on the home page with an image in place and how to place links inside articles”
Famous words “tha’s it, ive done it i’m ready” I jest of course as in a very basic way i was ready and i was able to put a post on the home page and send an alert on social media to it! However, having said that my personal journey of discovery and learning about the tech, blogging, vlogging, social media and web design and hosting was just beginning and i’m still learning to this day! I do enjoy that learning side which has helped enormously i’m actually hungry for knowledge and data.
The focus of this blog post however is hosting so setting aside design and social media and blogging itself and focusing on hosting is really food for content because its just not always as simple as buy a cheap hosting package of a re-seller and that’s it your up and running. I think the best way to think about this is “the time that passes until your hosting is not working for you”
You see its one thing to have hosting that is working today and then as your business grows to have that same hosting working a month or 6 months down the road. The time does pass and as your time is spent being busy and getting everything done within your deadlines, hosting problems will take time away from your work, and if the site ( s ) go down, its stressful, and if you have to move packages then you site will be down for maybe a day! This could happen at the busiest time of the week or year, but if you have a hosting problem, its not a case of I’ll sort it next week, if the site is down or not working properly which is what we mean by a hosting problem then its an immediate grab all attention problem, it either gets sorted or you are no longer online!
A corollary to this and very closely linked issue here is “server problems” hosting really is a case of what server you are on, the capability of that server if that server is share with other sites and how many other sites is it shared with. So if you think of “hosting” as your “server” then every website on that server is using resources. Every server has limited resources, so there is a level of use a point at which the server can longer fulfill the demand on its resources at which point it stops functioning. So what are the things that constitute a demand on the server. Those are everything stored on the server so images, any code, so the code that determines how the server functions is a demand on the server, the images you upload to your site, and then there are the visitors to the site, so a visitor sees your link to your domain and clicks on that, immediately your server is receiving that as a request to fulfill at the visitors demand a request to open a page on your site, your server has to locate that site and send the contents of that page to your visitors device. So just think of numbers of visitors and then think of all the other sites on a shared server all potentially fulfilling request at precisely the same time! thats when servers max out, too many demands on their resources!
The next issue is updates to your site plugins, the code on your website and the security and code used on your server, is your reseller updating that, what is their arrangement wiht their hoster, is their hoster keeping things up to date! If you are running a busy blog and things start to go wrong then those are the sorts of questions that come up in your mind and you can literally question everything, as we did and end up in the small hours of the morning online in your “cpanel” please excuse jargin, and you can end up very stressed out!
What was out solution, how did we find the right package for us?
We started exploring the boundaries of the existing shred server package. the first time our site went down, we had no idea about any of this information above in this article, we just phoned our agent and asked them to fix it in a deep state of panic! they fixed it, but with 24hrs the site went down again! After a few weeks of this we had to explore more options. Over the course of 5 years we servers probably about 6 times. Each time we moved it was to a slightly higher spec, unfortunately one of the moves was to a lower spec which had i’m afraid been mis-sold to us as if it was higher spec hwen in fact it was not, so that meant moving again within a week and in that situation you are best to remain on good terms with that company to facilitate a quick move away rather than get into confrontation, they are simply going to deny that its mis-sold… after about 2 years we realised the only way to go was a dedicated server. So no one else is on the server except your self. what a great idea! It is but then you have to to all the server updates and security yourself unless you buy a managed dedicated server package which is prb somewhere in the region of atleast another 30% on the cost.
We operate on a small budget! So what did we end up with? One of the highest budget options a managed dedicated server, and for 3 years we have not had to move or had a single solitary issue! I would caution you however that the prices quoted for managed dedicated servers vary wildly! I will simply say that going direct to source is much much cheaper, get prices from lots of course but get direct to the company who warehouse the servers themselves and you will get the best price! We use names.co.uk.
Unless you are trained which would take a little while then every time you move to a new server you will need a team to handle the move. Many server providers do not offer this service, so a third party can handle that for you.
In conclusion, getting the best price managed dedicated server is in our opinion the only way to go for a media business. We have 10 years experience of all the different shared server options and if we can help you do not hesitate to contact me directly on gary@intouchrugby.com where i will pass along the name of the company we use for our server (£100 per month roughly they have lower price and some high depending on your needs including managed support) and for anytime we have to move servers (£150 this is a superb price and they do a super smooth job).
A few additional observations.
We did use google to find out about our current provider.
We initialy chose them for price, they were simply excellent although their location in UK was important to us.
We are very happy with this company.
We got our domain from godaddy but have recently moved that to names.co.uk.
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