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Web Hosting, Web Hosting UK, Dedicated Servers, Managed Hosting, Dedicated Server | CWCS
In the past two decades websites have moved from being “trophies”, showcasing the achievements and USPs of a business, to being central participants in the communications and profit-making activities of a company.
Consequently business websites have become increasingly central to corporate wellbeing. It is regarded essential that mission critical websites, especially those involved in e-commerce, have the highest possible levels of uptime, are speedy and responsive to user requests, and provide a safe, secure browsing experience.
There is, however, a practical solution to these exacting business requirements: “Managed Hosting”. Managed hosting is an arrangement by which a website hosting company will provide you with a service tailored to maintaining and supporting your website. This will include configuring and managing a server dedicated specifically to your website.
Here at CWCS we provide a brilliant managed hosting service. Your server can be installed with your own choice of operating system, Linux or Windows, and whatever flavour of that operating system most suits your web developers, and the site itself. Our package also comes with 24/7 technical support 365 days a year. After all, you need to be able to know that help is only a phone call away. Another highlight of our managed hosting service is our load balancing system.
This means that should one server experience a problem, a backup or failover server immediately kicks in and handles your website traffic, ensuring that your end users will never even notice a problem in the first place.
Speed now plays an important part in your search engine rankings as Google have now factored website loading time into their search engine algorithm. It is now vital that your website is hosted with a professional managed hosting company who can guarantee 100% uptime and unlimited bandwidth for your dedicated server.
According to Google’s Webmaster Blog:
“We’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. Speeding up websites is important – not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed – that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.”
We encourage you to start looking at the speed of your site, not only to see how to improve your search engine rankings, but your customers experience on your website. The loading time of your site could now be the difference between hitting that first page of Google and your website being nowhere to be seen.
In order to stay ahead of the competition, it is vital that your hosting company is not letting your website down, so make sure that it is hosted on high speed dedicated servers from CWCS Managed Hosting.
As data access devices continue to shrink (iPad, android phones, netbooks) and people expect to be able to access their email, files and other important information from wherever and whenever they want to, it becomes more important to ensure the complete availability of that data.
Its now no longer acceptable to host your company’s data in your office because, as ADSL bandwidths go up, you’ll no doubt be replacing your old leased line internet access with one of those.
That’s a fine strategy for being cost effective but then when your line goes down and you contact your ISP to find out that there aren’t any SLAs on ADSL services, your entire operation, both internal and external users, just stops.
However, if you choose to host your critical data on a dedicated server or a fully managed server in a state of the art data centre like one of ours, then your files, emails and so on are guaranteed to be available 24/7/365, 100% of the time. Now you can replace your expensive leased line with ADSL and use a 3G service as a backup to it. Your remote and mobile users can use their 3G device to access it and there are no slowdowns, as we have plenty of capacity in our data centre.
The word ‘Linux’ sounds a little like a quaint cartoon character, but in fact the word stands for a powerful computer operating system that is no longer just for enthusiasts, and is increasingly becoming a viable alternative to Windows in mainstream computing.
Linux is a UNIX based operating system which has its origins in the early 1990s, and derives its name from its Finnish creator Linus Thorvalds. Linux is “open source”, which effectively means “free to install and use”.
Whilst Linux can be used on home PCs it is mostly known for underpinning industrial-strength servers, particularly web servers.
The cost benefits of not having to pay software license fees could be reason enough for choosing a Linux server to host your website. However, the reputation of Linux-based servers is not founded on cost advantages alone.
Linux servers have also developed a reputation for reliability, complemented by extended periods of uptime (counted in months rather than weeks).
Moreover, a Linux server is far less prone to security breaches than severs based on other operating systems, mostly down to the uncompromising, self-protective way that Linux is coded.
Finally, a Linux server is compatible with a host of other open source applications which can help you build a website for free. These include web hosting server software, database packages, and CMS’.
Here at CWCS, should you choose a Linux dedicated server for your website, we can help you on your way with passionate customer service and first-rate 24/7 technical support, provided by phone and email.
There can be few things worse for website owners than that breezy phone call from a friend, saying “just thought I’d let you know: your site’s broken”.
‘Broken’ can of-course mean different things to different people, so take a look for yourself as soon as possible.
Here are some scenarios that can come under the heading “broken”.
A single page could be unavailable whilst the rest of the site remains up. This is known as a ‘404′ error. Start by trying to reproduce the problem on another computer. If you and others also get the missing page then this could indicate file corruption on the dedicated server, or at worse deletion by a rogue process.
Sometimes, part of a page can appear garbled or not display properly. This could be related to browser compatibility, and should be taken up with your web developer as soon as possible. If you yourself are the developer, then you will need to work on debugging the issue methodically, and perhaps consulting with other developers on forums.
The most serious problem is when a whole site becomes unavailable to all users, i.e. when a site ‘goes down’. This is an urgent issue for your web hosting company, and they would need to investigate their hosting server and diagnose the problem.
Here at CWCS Managed Hosting, we have we have a dedicated, expert technical support team, passionate about giving the best possible website hosting service to our clients. Should your site develop technical problems of any kind we should be your first port of call.
As your website changes and develops over time, your web hosting requirements are likely to change in tandem with it.
Let’s take a fictional case study of a family-run business selling eco-cleaning products.
In the early days, a two or three page promotional site, perhaps with contact details, plus some basic product information with a few enticing images, makes a perfectly satisfactory starting point. The starter plan hosting package we offer here at CWCS Managed Hosting would be more than sufficient for this kind of site.
Two years down the line, things might well change considerably for our case study website. It could have developed a lucrative e-commerce section, and the number of unique users per week might have increased from hundreds to thousands. The site now requires potentially unlimited bandwidth and more hard disk space to remain viable and competitive. For such a site a dedicated server soon becomes a very real option.
A dedicated server is a single server entirely set aside for your company’s website or sites. Dedicated servers can be managed by you, or your IT department, but many site owners choose a dedicated server with “managed hosting”. Here, the web hosting company takes all the server administration duties off your hands, including applying updates, as well as checking for smooth running and optimal performance.
Here at CWCS, should you opt for a dedicated server we can provide a high quality managed hosting service, including terrific technical support and an assigned project manager for every client.
For a dynamic, growing business, with increased amounts of web traffic, and perhaps an e-commerce arm, a dedicated server soon becomes a serious option.
A dedicated server is a web hosting server entirely dedicated to your site. Your site gets a unique IP address, which gives the added bonus of highlighting its uniqueness to certain search engines. As well as this, the site can support considerably more traffic than a website on a shared server.
However, physical dedicated servers tend to be on the expensive side, doubtless because of their many advantages.
It is now possible to benefit from the advantages of a dedicated server, but at a more reasonable cost, through a “virtual dedicated server”. A “virtual dedicated server” is an emulation of a self-contained physical computer created entirely in software. More than one of these virtual machines can exist on a single computer, which has been configured as a virtual server host machine.
A virtual dedicated server performs and behaves in ways almost identical to a physical dedicated server, but without the overheads of “real” hardware. Site owners can still choose between the Linux and Windows operating systems. They can also install whatever website software they require, from forums and blogs, to e-commerce.
Here at CWCS we find that many clients are keen to take advantage of this economic means of getting hold of the “holy grail” of a dedicated server. We are also proud of the high level of technical support we offer our dedicated server clients.
Security is one of the most pressing concerns for any website owner, especially if the site is integral to their business and a means of income.
One of the keys to a secure website is to ensure that your web hosting company takes security as seriously as you do. So, when researching web hosting deals, take the trouble to ask the company about three key aspects: firewalls, virus protection, and backup.
A firewall is a hardware or software component that minimises the risk, as far as practicably possible, of intrusion on to the hosting web server. A firewall is the first line of defence, and is arguably the most crucial part of your armoury.
Antivirus software is the second line of defence and works, a little bit like vaccines, by checking against a harmless internal database of known threats and neutralising any software on the host PC that appears to be “carrying” that threat.
Finally, there’s backup. Backup is essential in the event of data loss of all kinds (theft and fire damage for instance). However, a good and frequent backup service will mean you can get your site restored by your website hosting company in the unfortunate event that a hacker manages to break through the first two lines of defence and corrupt your site.
Here at CWCS we provide the most up-to-date and robust security services as part of our hosting packages, as well as regular site backups, in combination with high-quality, dedicated and responsive technical support.
Websites tend to grow and change in tandem with the site owner’s organisation or business.
A website might start out as a 3-page marketing platform, but can, over the years develop in to a fully-fledged large-scale site, perhaps including video, e-commerce, blogs, and a forum.
When a site reaches that kind of size the dedicated server web hosting option is a serious option.
A dedicated server is a server entirely given over to hosting your individual site and there’s usually a choice to make between the Linux and Windows operating systems.
There are sometimes good reasons for choosing a Windows dedicated server.
First, the server itself comes loaded with Windows, an operating system which is familiar to users the world over, and so there will be less of a learning curve when managing the system, installing updates and so on.
Furthermore your windows server will come pre-installed with an entire web application framework, called .NET, which will give your software developers a head-start when building applications such as forums and picture galleries. .NET is both powerful and scaleable.
With Windows dedicated server, there’s also support for the database systems which underpin your site, whether MS SQL or Access.
If your website designer prefers working with any of the above tools then they will be most comfortable working on a Windows dedicated server.
Here at CWCS we provide a variety of Windows dedicated server packages, along with expert 24/7 technical support, and an assigned project manager.
Web hosting comes in a variety of flavours. Small-scale websites tend to be comfortable with renting space alongside other sites on a shared server.
However, for large scale sites, with database, e-commerce, and multimedia components, as well as high bandwidth requirements, a dedicated server soon becomes the preferred option.
A dedicated server is a single server devoted entirely to hosting a single website – yours.
There are a number of advantages in choosing Linux as the operating system for your dedicated server.
Linux is an open source operating system that has grown in popularity since the early 1990s, especially – combined with Apache web server software – as an operating system for web servers.
“Open source” means that Linux is free to install and run, so choosing Linux helps to keep costs down. Do, however bear in mind that, with any professionally supported web hosting service there will always be associated costs.
Another reason for choosing Linux dedicated servers is their stability. They can have many months of “uptime”, meaning that no restart is required, because the system has not been troubled by crashes or problem software processes.
Linux servers are, furthermore, considered to be highly secure: known for being more resistant to hacking and less susceptible to viruses than other operating systems.
However, even if you choose Linux you will still need installation and support services. Here at CWCS our speedy 24-hour phone and email support is unrivalled, whilst our Linux system administrators know their product inside out.
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