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A fully scaleable hosting solution based in Blyth, Northumberland. (North East England).
Reliable, secure hosting at Widescope.net

Hosting your website means placing it on the Internet network so that it is available to people who want to visit it. There are two basic choices: internal of external hosting. Hosting a website internally is the general option for intranets, where visitors come only from within your organisation. External hosting is the usual option for public websites.web-hosting-at-widescope-joanne

External hosting has many advantages; hosting is a complex activity, and there are many things that can go wrong. At Widescope we have staff that have dealt with such issues for over a decade. We don't "share" servers with other companies, meaning all the facilities we have at our disposal aren't shared between different companies.

We host our servers on reliable networks where we have direct access to the services we provide. These are either through Managed Hosting or Collocation Hosting. With backups, daily and weekly we guarantee that if a restore is required - we're able to provide. In addition, if hardware looks to be failing (for example a hard drive) we can get it replaced within an hour, without taking the server offline and ideally at a time, overnight so that it doesn't effect your business.

Special programming features

If you want to do anything with your websites that involves special programming, you must make sure that your hosting package supports it. It is essential to check whether your website is stored on a machine that supports the UNIX or Microsoft operating system platform. Basically, before you select a hosting package you must discuss with your programmers or consulting company the potential programming that might be involved.

At Widescope we support everything from standard contact forms to complicated database interpretation languages such as php and asp. All of the websites we build include hosting free of charge for the first year without hosting set up charges. When setting up a website the only things you'll be billed for in addition to the initial design are databases and extra backups as required. If you don't need either, you won't pay for bandwidth or any hosting facility during the first year. After that, we'll charge only for the services you require namely data storage.

There are a number of features, over and above basic hosting, that must be considered when choosing a hosting package. These include:

  • e-mail management: with your own domain you will want your own e-mail addresses, such as sales@mycompany.com or name@mycompany.com. Depending upon your hosting package, you may be allocated a certain number of e-mail addresses. Make sure that this allocation is sufficient or at least source a host that allows you to add addresses as your company grows.

  • e-mail forwarding: you may need e-mail to be forwarded to certain addresses. Check that the hosting package offers this. Widescope offer this with all web package services as standard.

  • e-mail auto-responders: if you are away for the office you may want to use an auto-response function, whereby if someon sends you an e-mail they recieve an automated response informing that that you are away. In addition to this Widescope also offer the ability to then forward all incoming email on that address to another one, meaning anything important coming in is still dealt with by another member of your staff in your absence.

  • web statistics: web log analysis software is vital for tracking trends across your website and the logs associated with general visitors to your site should always be stored by the webhost. At Widescope we offer a standard version known as Webalizer and an advanced option known as Urchin. Urchin was bought out by Google in 2005 and is now part of the Google Analytics suite. Our servers still use Urchin but as a result of the buyout, it is no longer free.
In addition to above, Widescope offer various packages for those that wish to create their own website but wish to use our professional network of FTP servers. Services such as CGI, Front Page extensions and ASP can be catered for but are purchased seperately as "add on" options. For more information regarding pure FTP services contact us on 01670 542854.
All of our websites include:
  • FREE Initial Consultation
  • Professional Design & Layout
  • Logo design (if required)
  • Consultations to approve and expand website
  • Access to site statistics (type varies based on package)
  • Graphics, stock images, image optimisation and artwork
  • Copywriting (if required)
  • Email forwarding
Portfolio
Listed below are examples of some of the work we have completed for existing clients. Please follow the link to view their website:
Genitrix - Veterinary Pharmaceutical Company - A website with members section, newsletter facilities and downloadable PDFs for one of the UKs fastest growing veterinary pharmaceutical companies.

Testimonial
"SLT Engineering have worked with Widescope Web Design for some years. During this time they have developed the marketing side of the business by the building and designing of our web site with the emphasis on continuous development to embrace our changing customer base.

They have designed special email templates for specific industries and even restructured the SLT website so that it will run on my mobile phone web browser; this is very helpful when attending meetings at customer’s sites as I do not need to take a laptop - I just log onto the slt site over the phone. The best thing I can say about Widescope is that they have never let us down and we are happy to do business with them for many years to come."
- Ernie Craig, SLT Engineering MD of SLT Engineering

Support
Widescopes' dedicated support staff are always on hand for any Website related enquiry.
Our support staff team leaders can be reached between 8:30 - 17:00 GMT Monday to Friday in the following way:
Technical Problems - Kyle Cochrane
E-mail: helpdesk@widescope.net
Tel: 01670 542 854
Fax: 01670 542 890
Other Enquiries - Richard Sharp
E-mail: support@widescope.net
Tel: 01670 542 890
Fax: 01670 542 890

Web Pakage Offers
Websites with 1 month free search engine submissions from only £299 + VAT
Key issues to consider when choosing a hosting option or a web host
Ask Yourself

1. Do I need a domain name?

2. How many visitors do I expect each month?

3. How much space, and what access speeds, will I require?

4. Will I require e-commerce facilities?

5. Will I require special programming facilities, such as CGI scripts?

6. How do I want to deal with e-mail?

7. What sort of support is offered?

8. What are the price and payment options?
A web host is as important as the site itself. If the hosting company or designer relies solely on a third party to fix something, it is probably time to look elsewhere.
- A website should be online 24 hours of the day 7 days a week with hardware only being replaced during scheduled maintenance period

Common Mistakes
Going for the cheapest option
The cheapest option is rarely the best choice, particularly when it comes to free hosting. It is nearly always better to spend a little more to get better infrastructure and support.

The more you depend on your website and e-mail, the less you can afford to have them go down for any length of time.

Not planning ahead
You may not want e-commerce today, but will you want it in six months time? If so, you must make sure that the web host you choose can provide it, or that you can easily migrate to another package with the hosting company. Changing hosting companies is a messy and time-consuming process.

It is best to get it right first time.

At Widescope any Website that is designed by us is automatically hosted on secure, reliable servers that have regular backups. In addition those that just use us for FTP services to host their site also benefits from these regular backups.

We run and maintain our own servers because we know how to. We've built our own in the past and we use only networks we know we can rely on 24/7.

Can your webhost make the same claim?