Do you know what goes on in your neighbour’s apartments? Web Hosting – Explained

By Adam

Do you know what goes on in your neighbour’s apartments? Web Hosting – Explained

Have you ever rented an apartment next to unapologetically noisy neighbours reigned over by a less than vigilant landlord? This is not an alien experience for many of us, and, it happens to be an appropriate analogy for a consistently misunderstood topic on the web – hosting. In our experience it is the topic of hosting that perplexes more businesses than any other aspect of the web. It’s not a terribly difficult system to understand, once its logical framework is deconstructed and explained in easy-to-understand terms.
So, back to our apartment analogy, think of the hosting framework as an apartment building in which you rent space. For most of us we can’t afford our own apartment building (a dedicated server), so instead, we rent a single apartment (a section of a shared server) housing many other companies. Think of the apartment building as the server, the websites as the apartments, and the tenants as the businesses paying for space (or an apartment) on which to showcase their web presence (or keep their belongings indoors); are you with me so far? The confusion usually occurs with the outward facing entity (website) consistently receiving blame for any disruption in display. In fact, the culprit of these interruptions is more often than not – hosting.
Here are some examples of hosting or ‘Apartment’ issues:
·      Dirty neighbours > Unsecured plug-ins or configurations
o   This means that a security breach within any of the websites on the shared server can easily be spread throughout all the units of the apartment building like an infestation or virus. Thus, your website can be compromised as a result of another business’s poor back-end development.
·      Is your apartment the right fit? > Understanding Load Time
o   It’s important to assess the building in which you’re choosing to rent. Will the apartment you’ve selected fit all your furniture and belongings? Having furniture stacked from floor to ceiling will increase the time it takes to get in and out of the apartment. The same is true for the server space you purchase for your website. If the selected package is insufficient, your website will suffer load time delays; meaning no one will want to come visit your website or apartment.
·      Is your landlord incompetent? > Up Time & Reliability
o   Maintenance and upkeep of the building should be a key inquiry when searching for an apartment. Nobody wants to live somewhere that requires a 2-week lead-time to get something fixed. Nor would you want to live somewhere that is constantly in a state of disrepair. Hosting is no different, you need a service with constant monitoring, preemptive backups, and a rectifying system in place with lightning fast response time.
  The critical takeaway here is that this business decision isn’t just a $4-$15 a month expenditure. An ill-prepared business making the wrong decision in this one fundamental area will unknowingly create a whole host of issues for the future. See what I did there? Don’t take this decision lightly, down time is the death of web presence.
See ya next time,

About the author

I'm nobody's taxi service but I take pride in driving the bus! Upbeat, energetic serial entrepreneur on the quest to serve and help people. I enjoy long walks on short beaches and adventurous, adrenaline-pumping activities. I'm a normal bloke doing abnormal bloke things!
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