Me & the Boss

Me & the Boss

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Hosting Your Own Website

By Stephen Grisham Sr.

When it comes to web hosting, the economist Adam Smith's theories of labor division really apply. It may seem like a good, money-saving idea to be your own web host, but there's much more involved than it appears at first glance. Prior to purchasing any web site hosting equipment, consider everything that being your own web host will entail.

Server: A server is a very powerful computer that is specially configured to deal with network tasks. For a short time, you may be able to get away with buying your own server for a small-scale business. Both IBM and Hewlett Packard offer quality servers. In addition, Dell is a good server provider.

Security: Securing your Server is probably the most difficult part of doing your own website hosting. Network Security specialists are trying to keep up with the hackers and spammers (not the other way around). Server Security is a highly technical task that never ends. It is certainly not a matter of installing an antivirus or internet security program. Unless you have a Certified Administrator or equivalent on staff, you'll probably need to forget doing your own hosting.

Software Licensing: Usually, server Operating Systems are licensed for a predetermined amount of users. You can end up spending an astounding sum of money for software licenses.

Network: It's necessary to obtain a data trunk at the location you wish to keep your server in. Directly connecting the server to your ISP very likely won't work at all. Some people go that route for personal websites and trial runs; however, you should not try that in hosting your own website or your bandwidth will be reduced. Examine the terms of service of your ISP if you only have an undersized website.

You will also need to acquire equipment like a handy off-site backup system for your data, as well as a sturdy battery backup to take care of power glitches.

Employees: If you do not have an employee who is knowledgeable with regard to networks, it will be necessary for you to hire someone to be on call or on duty pretty much around the clock. Even the best servers and networks experience problems - very often. It isn't possible to just "set it and forget it" for very long at all. There is absolutely no chance of that.

Here's the Bottom Line: A rented web hosting service will host your website on its powerful and dependable servers; for you, this means you won't need to expend large sums of your hard-earned cash for hardware and labor. If you don't have an enormous volume of web traffic and the support of a diligent IT staff, you will be wasting needless expenditures as well as acquiring too much trouble. Costing no more than $10.00 per month, shared web hosting for a little site is readily available. You won't find anything better.

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