Web Hosting and Domain Names Explained

This page: getting-started.php was last updated: May 26 2012 15:12:18.

We are setting out the basics of Web Hosting in a series of articles. Everything from choice of Domain Name to creating basic sites, through to the best way of getting visits or traffic to your site. If you'd like to know about any related topic not listed below, we'd be delighted to offer free advice.

What is Web Hosting?

Web hosts like Weycrest, are service companies that operate servers, specially designed for hosting websites, email, databases and other content. These servers are located in secure datacentres, with redundant power and air conditioning. Also these datacentres are also centred around powerful internet network hubs (usually in London) to ensure 24/7/365 fully redundant connectivity.

Home or Office Hosting

Of course its possible for you to host your own content on a home or office PC or server, however this would require some knowledge of server setup and maintenance. Also not all home or office connections are permanent, or have the capacity to handle a great deal of email and web traffic, especially if streaming media are involved.

To even contemplate hosting your site reliably at the office or home, you would have to consider at leased line or SDSL connection, but even these don't offer a redundant solution should the connection fail. In addition you will also have to purchase the server and firewall/router. Most web hosts like Weycrest have multiple connections, and operate a routing protocol called BGP4, to ensure web sites remain available should a connection fail.

This is where our web hosting service comes into the picture. We provide the Hosting Infrastructure and networks that enables you to place your websites and emails onto our servers, with a view to making them widely available, all of the time to everyone else on the internet. Also its very common for web hosting to be bundled with other services such as email and database hosting.

However for those that wish to host their domain, email and web site at home or at the office, Weycrest, can point your domain accordingly via the DNS system.

Shared Web Hosting

For most small to medium web sites, Shared Hosting is the most cost effective option. Basically your website will share space on the server with many other websites, possibly using the same IP address.

Reseller Hosting and Multiple Domain Hosting

Reseller hosting allows an internet business to obtain a large amount of bandwidth and space on its account and divide the space as it sees fit. This is similar to a shared hosting because your server is placed on the same server as others. But at least you can decide on the amount of the divisions and with whom to share, even to create your own hosting plans.

FTP or File Transfer Protocol

Once your web site is designed and created it can then be uploaded to our servers using an FTP client such as Filezilla. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is one of the most popular or traditional ways of uploading content to a server. However their are numerous methos of uploading to our servers, and we even provide a simple to use "Explorer" like File Manager.

What is Email Hosting?

Not everyone needs a web site, however many require a secure and reliable email service which is totally independent of their ISP or broadband provider, without having to run their own mail servers. Accordingly we provide low cost Email Hosting Plans which allow users to create their own mail boxes and autoresponders, but without web site hosting facilities (though a parking page or domain pointing or forwarding is provided).

Our email plans re 100% configurable from within our online Control Panel and with three plans to choose from, the only decision left is how many users, mailboxes, or mail storage capacity you will need. To view our Antivirus and SpamAssasson Protected E-mail Hosting for home and small business use, Click Here for Email Hosting

Please note our Popular Low Cost Web Hosting Plans also have full email facilities too, so there is no need to order seperate plans for email and web hosting.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is a webname, your Website Address. It's your "unique identifier" (also known as a URL) on the internet so that people know where to find you and importantly bookmark and link back to you.

All they have to do is type your domain name into their browser in order to get to your website. Weycrest.com, yahoo.com and google.co.uk are examples of Domain Names. Additionally domain names are used email and increasingly (with VOIP) for messaging and voice communications.

This is why it is so important to get your own domain name, which is truly portable and you can take with you.

Many people sign up for free hosting, with the address of their provider ie: "yourwebspace.afreeprovider.com." Not only does this look unprofessional, but you can't take this address with you when you leave, so your original free provider (which originally looked a bargain) now gets all your carefully built up web traffic.

Domain names have many different "extensions" such as .co.uk Domain Name, .com etc. Recently Europe got a new domain extention in the form of the .eu domain Basically these domains are operated by top level registrars who "lease" them to website owners like yourself for one, two or more years at a time.

Examples of such registries are Nominet (for UK domains) and Eurid (for .eu domains). The operating of some of the most popular .com, .net domains is shared by several large registrars. These "top level" registrars operate like wholesellers dealing with smaller registrars (like Weycrest) as theirretailers. There is no price advantage in going direct. For instance a direct co.uk registration with Nominet would set you back £80.

With many Weycrest packages we'll often register your choice of co.uk domain name free of charge or, alternatively, you can transfer a domain name with you if you already have one. Once your domain has been chosed and registered it is then "linked" to your webspace using the "DNS" system. "DNS" stands for Domain Name Service and is a massive worldwide, distributed database which maps the "human friendly" domains to IP address, that computers use to talk to each other. Click Here for more information on our low cost domain name registration service

More information on domain names in general can be found in our article Why do I need a Domain Name"

Where can I get more help and advice?

We're used to dealing with all types of users, both novice and experienced customers. Our team would be delighted to offer you free help and advice. Please contact us by going to this page