If you have a web page, you have one of many web hosting sites to store your files and make them accessible to the world. So how do you choose? First, you’ll want to educate yourself on some of the terms you’ll come across while negotiating the web hosting world.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is essentially the total amount of data that can be transferred at one time on your site. Your site will load faster for visitors if you have more bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth you need is dependent on the amount of traffic your site generates and the file size of your web pages (including multimedia files).
At Pair, our package levels set the bandwidth allowances. For example:
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for “Content Management System.” It is the software a host offers that gives you the ability to make a website without having to know how to code. It is a great solution for people who want to build a website but don’t have a lot of technical skills.
You can create and manage content, customize the design of your site, and install extensions to add functionality to your site — all without coding. (It’s important to note that most platforms do allow you to add custom code for more granular control over your site, too.) A good CMS like WordPress allows you to build a attractive, secure, powerful, and optimized website for search engines.
At Pair, our Software Installation Manager, known as PairSIM, provides an easy way to install, upgrade, and manage popular, high-quality CMS software packages for your Web site. Choose your favorite.
If you choose WordPress, you might like to take advantage of one of our hosting packages, but it isn’t necessary:
What is a Server?
Servers run everything on the internet. They are high-powered computers that store, process, and manage network data, devices, and systems. They provide network devices and systems with resources, whether it’sit’sting a data-heavy website, setting up a shared drive for a department, or managing thousands of queries a minute, servers are the vehicles for hosting and processing-intensive workloads that go beyond the capabilities of a traditional computer. Your server determines your sitesite’slity to function and be safe.
Pair offers many server hosting options, including Shared, Managed WordPress, Podcast Websites (designed specifically for Podcasters), Weebly, VPS, Desiccated and ShopSite for commerce.
What is a CDN?
CDN stands for “Content Delivery Network,” usually a set of linked servers that speed up data retrieval for customers. CDNs use caching to improve site performance. Caches store copies of files to deliver them more quickly where they are needed. CDNs are like the little local worker bees that make things happen quickly. They allow your site to load faster, thereby decreasing “bounce rate,” meaning folks tend to stay on your site longer. (We cater to the impatient consumer). Essentially, each CDN server backs up the other servers, and this arrangement presents a failsafe network that has less chance of going offline.
At Pair, our CDN operates over a diverse network covering North America and Europe and Asia, Australia, and South America. For instance, when users access your site, the bulk of the response time is due to content downloads such as images, style sheets, and scripts. With PairCDN, however, your visitors download that content from the nearest available server on the PairCDN network, resulting in significantly faster response times.
What about VPS Hosting?
VPS (we love our acronyms) stands for Virtual Private Server. A VPS is a virtual operating system that lives on a physical server and provides private (dedicated) server resources to a customer. This means you are not sharing your server, increasing reliability and security. Although VPS is more expensive than shared hosting, it’s less expensive than dedicated servers, which we will discuss below. Plus, it is super easy to expand as your needs grow.
PaiPair’sS is fully managed, meaning that Pair takes care of everything for you. You don’t have to worry about privacy, security, etc. We also don’t charge upgrade or downgrade fees.
And Dedicated Hosting?
Dedicated Hosting (we could call it DH just for fun) involves a customer renting a single, physical server from the web hosting provider. Dedicated hosting gives you complete control over the server, so you can install whatever you want.
Pair’s Dedicated Hosting Services are fully managed hosting with Guaranteed uptime, 24/7 top-tier support, disaster recovery backups, security updates and email hosting. You literally have to worry about nothing.
Our goal at Pair is to offer our customers everything they need or want to know about living successfully and profitably on the internet. We hope informative bits like this keep you wanting to flourish and that you’re looking forward to Part 2. Stay tuned!
