Beginners guides to websites and hosting services

This is probably the most important of the five, as once you've established yourself and your brand or name there can be problems if you decide to change it later.  e.g. lost traffic, or a competitor buying it.

 

If you are already an established business, then part of this choice may already be made for you.

i.e. you probably want it to at least include, your current trading name - but this isn't always the case.

 

e.g. "Joe's-Pizzeria-Heaton" may decide to transition to "Geordie Pizzas" and re-brand to match, whilst hoping to take advantage of Geordie & Pizza as keywords in their new domain name.

 

PLUS If it's shorter and simpler without hyphens, punctuation, or funny spellings, it's much more memorable when you say it to somebody.

 

Unless you're in a new market, or in a small niche, then a unique and "brandable" name that tells people who you are & what you do in less than 15 characters, & with a .com suffix is a big ask - but with the new TLD's, Top Level Domains (That's the letters after the dot) being available this isn't the problem it used to be.....

 

Yes, you can even buy a ".pizza" domain name through us now.    

 

Beware of the 'Big Box "bargain" hosting companies' offer you free hosting on a sub-domain (often included if you buy your domain name through them) :- 

 

Sub-domain hosting means that you could end up with something like:-

geordie.pizza.sharedhosting.com as a web address.

&   Joe@geordie.pizza.sharedhosting.com  for an e-mail.

 

As you can see, they hardly trip off the tongue do they!

Once you have settled on your domain name, you've probably also formulated some basic ideas on what you want to put across to the public, and how you want to present yourself or your business.

 

A simple website with a homepage & a few pages showcasing who you are, & examples of what you offer + a contact form is often all that is required by most small businesses. Start by having a look at some other websites in a similar niche for inspiration, & so you have an idea of what you like, and, what you don't!

 

Simple sites can be put together using a CMS, (Content Management System) like WordPress with it's many templates & themes giving you a head start, and leaving you to add your photos & text to the relevant pages. 

YouTube is a great resource for WordPress site building videos & you can follow along while you find your feet.

 

If you're not comfortable with building a site you can show us a website or template that you like the style of, & we can put together a price for creating something for you along similar lines.

 

Alternatively, if you are looking to be totally "hands off" & require a bespoke creation built from scratch including features such as custom graphics, video, photography, e-commerce/shopping carts/payment interface, etc. etc. - we can put you in touch with one of our partners for a chat.

 

OK, you've decided on your domain name, & have a good idea what you'd like your site to look like, you might even have downloaded a copy of WordPress to your PC & done some trial builds offline. Now it's time to get it out there on the web so you can be found, & so others can see your beautiful new creation.

 

This is where hosting comes in! 

 

Your "host" is who stores and delivers  the "data" of your website - all those pages, pictures, and words

 

Storage, Speed, Security, Suitability, & Spend (cost) should be your main concerns.

 

Buying a hosting package with enough storage for your website & all of it's content & media is crucial.

A hosting company that can't display a site quickly will get the site marked down in search engine rankings.

Websites that have been compromised, or with security vulnerabilities aren't looked on favourably by the search engines either - some even end up blacklisted.

Not having an SSL installed on your website seriously harms your rankings & often presents a warning pop-up in a visitors browser.

Websites hosted by companies that restrict your bandwidth can result in your site appearing to be offline once you exceed your limit.

 

 

- Autoscaling - Web Acceleration Suite - CDN - EDGE Caching - DDos Protection - Malware Scans - NO LVE limits - easy backup & restore - Wildcard SSL certificate -

and much much more.

 

Bandwidth is the amount of data used by the "traffic" that visits your website & views your content.

Many hosting companies limit your bandwidth allowance by £ & packages, & they will take your site "off-line" once your monthly limit has been reached - or - they will require more money to increase your limit.

 

WE DON'T!     We offer unlimited bandwidth as standard - on all packages!!

 

Whilst your site or blog may appear "simple" - if it contains a lot of high resolution images, lots of audio, or it has many visitors (high traffic), then the amount of data being used by those visitors soon adds up.

 

We didn't like the "pay per unit" model used by most providers because it's hard enough starting a business and getting yourself online without having to wildly guess at the amount of bandwidth you might require.

 

Lots of hosting companies charge you extra to host your e-mail, at £5 - £10 a month per mailbox.

 

Having a professional E-mail address plays a huge part in presenting yourself as a credible business.

 

That's why we include mailboxes with all of our hosting packages, each with a generous 10GB limit per mailbox.

 

Additionally you get  E-mail forwarders, Auto responders, Catch All address support, &, you can access your mailboxes using iMAP or POP3 on your mobile/tablet/PC or via a web-mail login via any browser on any device.

 

You can even use a static holding page pointing people to your social media, if that's where you mainly interact, & use your included e-mail hosting while you or we get your website up and running.

 

We see a continuous stream of new businesses & organisations putting themselves online with little or no thought as to the legality & GDPR compliance of their website & data handling procedures.

When you buy a domain & "self service hosting" via the big online hosting companies there is nobody there to tell you that you shouldn't have "NON ESSENTIAL" tracking & analytics cookies installed without the prior consent of the visitor.  Or to help you remove them if they're installed automatically/by default.
You are responsible - it's your company & your website; Whether it's UK hosted or elsewhere is irrelevant.

e.g. We saw a local holiday cottage had put themselves online. - They had bought their domain name & linked it to a subdomain on a "cottage listing" website. There they proceeded to build out their pages with no assistance or advice re. UK GDPR & cookie compliance - the listing company was USA based.

As soon as we visited their new site, 10 cookies were immediately installed, & half of these were purely for tracking & analytics. - i.e. non essential
There was NO informed consent pop up, allowing visitors to opt out prior to their installation, NO cookie policy, NO privacy policy, & NO terms and conditions.
For any EU/UK based online business, organisation or individual targeting visitors & traffic from the EU & UK these are all compliance issues.

"but, but, but,.......   Are analytics cookies not exempt? "    NO!   The ICO states - "Analytics cookies do not fall within the ‘strictly necessary’ exemption".

This means you need to tell people about your use of any "NON ESSENTIAL analytics cookies, and gain their consent BEFORE THEY ARE INSTALLED.

Given that most small businesses only want to use analytics for viewing the number of unique "new page visits", & "where the referral link came from" we provide this information FOR FREE via your control panel interface without requiring the use of cookies.

      It's broken down into Months/Weeks/Days and is accessed directly via your control panel interface.

              Doing it this way does not require any cookies on your website, or you to get the consent of your page's visitors.

ADDITIONAL WARNING  -  Guess what happens when you allow cookies from search engines and social media?

                        They use that information for "targetted advertising" i.e. similar products & services.