BHG Articles

The Internet has been around for quite a while but very few of us have been online for more than just a few years. I got my first start about 13 years ago on the Internet, a literal eternity as far as Internet age is concerned. It was at that time that I decided to start a business online and although things were different then, they were also similar in many ways.

You are probably aware that it is possible for you to buy a domain name from any one of dozens of different registrars. During the time whenever I bought my first domain, however, I had to pay $35 per year and I did so to a company known as networksolutions. You can now buy a domain name for well under $10 a year, but I did not have that choice at the time. Because I now owned the domain name, I needed a quick course in how to host the domain.

One of the first things that I did was to look at many of the shared hosting companies that were available at that time. In those days, a shared host cost anywhere from $20 per month and up. It is possible for you to get a shared host at well under five dollars a month nowadays, but again, those options were not available to me at the time. By having a shared host, you will have a small piece of a private server that you will share with anywhere from several hundred to a thousand or more other websites. That is how they are able to keep the cost low for these services.

There came a time whenever I ended up outgrowing the shared server and I needed to move into a larger, more robust system. It was at this time that I began looking at a virtual Private server, or VPS. This type of the server was on a more robust computer, and it did not have as many individuals that were sharing it at any given time. Because it was only split about eight different ways, I had access to more of the server resources for myself.

I also started adding additional domains to my portfolio as my business started to grow. There were times whenever I purchased shared server space in order to start a new domain name and then moved it over to a more robust platform as the website started to receive more traffic. I also started to compile old websites on the same server, but I always made sure that each domain name had its own IP address for search engine optimization purposes.

It didn’t take but a few years until my business grew to the point where I needed to go with a dedicated server. The hosting company that I was with allowed me to move my websites directly from the virtual Private server into a more robust, dedicated box. It allowed my business to grow and it continues to do so down to this day.

Is it going to take you a little bit of time to understand Web hosting? Of course it is, but the time that you spend understanding hosting and choosing a proper web host is going to enhance your business in a number of different ways. Don’t rush through this decision, as it is going to be a decision that you need to live with for the long term.