Website Hosting

for Small Businesses

To get webspace you have to choose a good web hosting company or ISP (Internet Service Provider). There are various things to consider. You want a web hosting company that listens to what you want to do on your website and helps you, instead of telling you how it can't be done, or how it will cost you extra.

You want a web hosting company that is able to offer CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts, for good interaction between the user and the website itself, and Frontpage extensions. They should also offer the option of autoresponders, hit counters, log files (to record the number and nature of your website's visitors) and certain other semi-interactive add-ons. They will need to be able to offer the ability to upgrade to a full e-commerce website, if that is not what your site started out as already, together with a shopping cart, secure server, and either the option of opening a merchant account with the web hosting company or opening your own merchant account which is totally compatible with the web hosting company's facilities. You also should be able to provide other ways of enabling customers and clients to pay without conflicting with the smooth working of your website as a whole, which should work seamlessly together. You should also aim to get a "static" rather than "dynamic" IP address. This is important when it comes to getting a listing on the search engines (qv.). Ask each potential hosting company you approach about this. Ask them to list everything that they offer. At this stage you won't know very much, so trust in the rule of thumb that if the web hosting's other customers are happy, then so should you be. You should also be looking at stability.

They should also be able to host PHP 4.0 (or later) scripts on their sites, and also Perl scripts and Microsoft Extensions. Establish whether you can set CHMOD permissions of folders (as well as files) of 777 on their servers. Some will only allow CHMOD settings up to 755, which will limit the interactive capabilities of some sites (however, ISPs who disallow 777 settings will always claim that this is due to security reasons).

Downtime, or the amount of time your web hosting company's network is not working, should be kept to a minimum. Uptime of less than 99.9 percent is unacceptable: 99 percent uptime sounds quite good, but will result in a total of 3.65 days every year when your host isn't delivering your website to potential visitors. In such cases we fool ourselves into thinking that only one percent isn't a lot.

If the hosting companies offers cPanel that is excellent. CPanel is a user-friendly interface that offers lots of add-ons and utilities that can be incorporated very easily into your site, like a forum or a blog. This is often done by using a part of cPanel called Fantastico, which is called that because it is fantastic. Users of hosting companies with Fantastico love it.

To learn more about good website hosting for small businesses click here.

Your Web Hosting Company and Your Computer(s) - Security and Related Matters

You will need antivirus software - we use Sophos. They are particularly good at giving you alerts of new viruses as soon as they appear. If you have unmetered Internet access (highly recommended) you will need a firewall. It's best if you have a firewall whatever type of access you have. Firewalls prevent people from hacking into your system, and come in two basic types - software and hardware; for the smaller business a software firewall will suffice. If you operate on a network it is best to get a physical firewall to protect your system. Get broadband (also called DSL, IDSN and ADSL) for speedy connection and download times. Unmetered broadband costs as little as £15 a month. There are many to choose from, and we recommend reliability and ease of contact in your consideration of which to use.

To learn more about good web hosts click here.

Anti-Spyware

A disturbing trend recently has been the rise in the number and proliferation of so-called spyware utilities. These are also known as adware, keyloggers, and scumware. They have various uses but their main purpose is to find out exactly where you are going and what you are doing on the Internet. This includes things like the ability to remember, copy and emulate specific keystrokes that you make - in other words, passwords and credit card details, and other sensitive data. It can read these and store them. It is thought that 91% of all personal computers are infected with such things. Symptoms include unexpected popup adverts and seemingly random slowing down of the system.

To learn more about anti-spyware software click here.

Backup

Along with security you need to backup your data. Some hosting companies offer regular backups on their own servers. That may be, but it will also be in your own interest to do your own backups as well. Zip drives are quite popular; they allow backups together with compression, and they are small and portable. Some hardware manufacturers offer bespoke backup drives on their own computers, either made by themselves or by third parties, such as the Colorado backup system; in most cases the backup procedure is fast, and the data stored on mini-cassettes which are highly portable and can be carried away to a safe place.

To learn more about backup systems click here.

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Contact Us:

Our Group company Inteltab can be reached by post at:

Inteltab
Suite 323
258 Belsize Road
London NW6 4BT
United Kingdom
email: support @ inteltab.com

Tel. +44 (0) 208 421 3194
Fax. +44 (0) 208 428 8280

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