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.
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 Co-location 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 optional
hosting extras.
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
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