What is involved in web hosting?:

You’ve got a web site all laid out and working on your local machine, but how do people around the world access it on the internet? You could obtain server software and connect your site to the World Wide Web, which would amount to hosting your own site.

But there is a downside to this.

You will need to learn how the server software works in all its intricacies and features, do all your troubleshooting, keep out hackers, or pay for IT staff do this for you. If you want a site that doesn’t frustrate the users of your site by being too slow, you will need fast connection lines, which is very expensive. You will also need to keep your server/computer on-line 24/7 to ensure that users around the world can access your site at whatever time they want. This produces several more problems.

1. You will need to ensure that your computer is going to manage the traffic to your site and not crash your computer
2. You will need to have back up maintenance parts, drives, back up etc.
3. You will need to have back-up power supply to ensure that a power outage doesn’t disrupt users, and worse, crash your computer, and worse still, corrupt your site.
4. You are best to have more than one phone line service to ensure service to the outside world (what say someone accidentally cuts through the phone line!), and even that’s not enough-for reasonably fast

And so it goes on.

The benefits of using a web hosting service is manifold. You do not need to worry about having the best and fastest machinery, maintenance, parts and back-up, 24/7 technical support, power back-up supplies, multi-lines to a back-bone to the World Wide Web, security etc are all looked after.

What plan should I choose?:

There are several criteria that you will need to take into consideration.

1. How much disk space will your site take up?
2. How much traffic do you envisage your site receiving?
3. How many MySQL databases will you need for your site?
4. The number of FTP accounts will you need to run your site?

There are other considerations such as how many POP3 Email accounts, how many mailing lists, how many autoresponders etc you will need?, but with Webanz, all these features are provided in unlimited numbers! Another, will you require secure server facilities? Again, Webanz supplies this falsity with all accounts, including the use of our own secure certificate.

Webanz provides an excellent range of plans. The Starter Plan contains more than most people would ever need for their site, and if your site starts to exceed the allowance for some features, you can easily upgrade.

If you are still not sure, contact us, and our capable staff will be able to assist in making a right choice.

Here is some helpful information on the two most important criteria (items 1 & 2 above):

Disk Space:

This refers to the amount of room you are given to place your files. Webanz is renowned for its generous disk space. To give you a general idea of how much space you will need, 1 MB equates with about 100 pages of text. For most, the 300 MB provided in the Webanz entry level plan is far more than most would ever use.

Traffic Allowance:

This is the amount of traffic that your site generates. Each time someone clicks on a link or downloads an item from your site, generates “traffic”. The average site should need something like 500 KB of traffic. If you allow downloads you will require more. It is reasonably easy to calculate how much traffic allowance you will need. Multiply the size of your largest page including all graphics by the number of impressions (clicks) you estimate your site will receive. For example: 50KB x 10,000 = 500, 000 KB. That is, you will need 500MB of traffic allowance if your site generates 10, 000 page views per month.

All Webanz plans have generous traffic allowances. The Webanz Starter Plan (our entry level plan) offers an enormous 15 GB!