Web hosting - Beginners questions
- What is web hosting?
- What does disc space refer to?
- What does data transfer refer to?
- How much diskspace do I need for my website?
- Is 1 GB of data transfer enough?
- Which web hosting account should I choose?
- What is domain delegation & which domain delegation option should I choose?
- Are you able to support webpages designed through dreamweaver or frontpage?
What is web hosting?
Web hosting is a place to store your website to let people (your clients) see it. Your domain name is your address on the Internet. Web hosting includes email services so that people can send you email on your domain name.
To make all this work we run a large number of high speed computers (servers) with built in redundancies so that we can guarantee your website and email will be working at least 99.8% of the time.
All this is provided to you in the form of website hosting plans. Depending on the size of your website or the number email accounts you need you can choose a plan that best suites your needs.
What does disc space refer to?
It is the amount of storage space you can use on our servers to hold all (webpages, images and scripts) files associated with your website. It means the amount of space that the files would take up on your computers hard disc drive.
What does data transfer refer to?
Data transfer is the volume of information that is transferred to or from your website. Every time a visitor looks at your website data is transfered. Data transfer also includes any email sent to you on your domain name.All website hosting plans include a generous included data allocation. If you exceed this allocation you will need to upgrade to the next hosting plan.
How much diskspace do I need for my website?
Most business websites need less than 5MB to store all of the files. Remembering that the average user on a 56Kbps modem connection can only download approximately 20MB in 1 hour, if your site is much large than 5MB it will be too slow for people to download.
Is 1 GB of data transfer enough?
Yes. Only very large or high volume websites will ever exceed 1 GB of data transfer in a month. An average business website would support up to 10,000 different people looking at their website every month and still not exceed 1GB of data transfer. The way we look at data transfer is that, if you ever have to pay for more data transfer your website will be generating so many benefits for your business that it will by far out weigh the cost of the excess data charges.
Which web hosting account should I choose?
All hosting plans include the same set of tools and features to build your website. You should choose the hosting account size based on the size of your website. If you are unsure its best to start with the 'Starter plan' as you can always upgrade at a later date.
More detailed information on hosting plans and services, and pricing is available online.
What is domain delegation & which domain delegation option should I choose?
Domain names registration by domain registrars. In order for your website and email to be handled by Anchor, your domain name needs to be delegated to us so that requests for information (such as your website) are directed to our servers.
You have a number of option for delegation:
- If this is a new domain, ie it hasn't been registered yet, we will register the domain name on your behalf and have it delegated to our servers.
- If you have already registered the domain, or it is an existing domain we can redelegate the domain for you. For .com.au or .net.au domains you will need to provide the registry key or domain password. For other domains a username and password may be required which should have been provided to you at the time of registration.
- If you have an existing domain and would like to arrange redelegation yourself you can do this by providing your domain name registration provider with Anchor's name servers
Are you able to support webpages designed through dreamweaver or frontpage?
Yes. Dreamweaver & Frontpage are well supported and can be used to build and publish websites on our servers. A guide for publishing your website with Fronpage is available in our support area.
