BeachSide hosting and web design FAQ. All questions answered here!
Everything you always wanted to know about
our hosting and MUCH MORE
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What is web hosting?
What is a domain name?
What is shared (virtual) web hosting?
What happens to my domain name when I
switch hosts?
What is domain parking?
What does space and transfer mean?
How do I pay for web hosting?
What is uptime?
Should I use a Unix or Windows based
server?
Should I choose the cheapest plan?
Are there any extra costs involved in
hosting a secure site?
I don’t have any experience in
making a website, where can I get help?
Why can’t I just use my DSL or
cable connection at home to host my website?
What is MySQL?
What is PostgreSQL?
What is PHP?
What control panel do you use?
What is the difference between an affiliate
and a reseller?
What is SSL and how is it used?
What are digital certificates?
Web hosting is the process of placing the files that make up your website on a webserver for it to be published and served on the World Wide Web. There are two main types of web hosting; free and paid. Free web hosting is provided by companies that give their users a limited amount of storage and transfer. In exchange for this service, the company often places banners on the websites for their own advertising purposes. Paid web hosting usually involves the use of a domain name to direct internet users to your website with no banners or advertisements, and have more storage, transfer and extra features than free hosts.
A domain name is a combination of letters and numbers that identify the location of your website. An example of a domain name is “Yahoo.com”. In order to get a domain, you must first register it. This process usually includes, deciding on the right name with a correct suffix (.com, .net, .org, .gov), making sure that the name is available and then choosing the appropriate registrar.
What is shared (virtual) web hosting?
Shared or virtual web hosting is the most common way to host websites. It means that a web hosting company will have one or more servers serving multiple websites. This allows the web hosting company to use resources more efficiently and provide cheaper rates. The downside of this is that if one website is constantly using a large amount of resources, the other websites on the server will not receive the same amount. Alternatives to shared web hosting are: dedicated, co-location and serving the WebPages off of your own computer. We constantly monitor all traffic to ensure that on one is using excessive bandwidth thus keeping our speeds at their maximum.
What happens to my domain name when I switch hosts?
When you register a domain name, it belongs to you. Regardless of where you registered it, you own that domain name and can freely move it around to whichever host you prefer.
Domain parking allows you to reserve a domain name for a cheaper rate and some registrars even let you park it for free. We recommend that, to ensure your domain name will not be registered by anyone else to go ahead and register it as soon as you can even if you do not have a web host yet. It is estimated there are over 20,000 new domain names registered every day!
What does space and transfer mean?
Storage space is the amount of room your files take up on the server. Depending on your package, this will vary. HTML and text documents don’t usually take up much room whereas multimedia files such as pictures, sounds and videos tend to use up more. Transfer is measured by how much your visitors are allowed to download before you reach your monthly limit. A lot of visitors going through a lot of your pages can create a lot of transfer.
We accept Mastercard and Visa well as PayPal checks and money orders.
Uptime is the percentage of time that your website will be up and running. You should always aim to choose a service provider that has a 99% and up for uptime.
Should I use a Unix or Windows based server?
Your decision should be based on what type of features you need. If you’re using IIS, ASP, VBScript, Windows Media, Microsoft SQL Server and don’t have any knowledge of Unix based solutions, you would be looking to use a Windows based server. Although Linux based systems are most common among web hosts, as they provide many shared-hosting features, have a good history of stability and performance.
Should I choose the cheapest plan?
It really depends on your hosting needs. If you feel as if you want to purchase the cheapest plan and find you need to upgrade at a later date BeachSideHosting.com makes upgrading easy and most importantly free!
Are there any extra costs involved in hosting a secure site?
If you want to use Certificate Authority such as Verisign and Thawte, you will have to pay additional fees.
I don’t have any experience in making a website, where can I get help?
You could hire BeachSide Hosting to create a website for you. Prices for websites vary by the functionality and professionalism of the desired website. Have a look at our portfolio.
Why can’t I just use my DSL or cable connection at home to host my website?
You could use your connection at home to host your website if you really wanted to. The reason people choose to use a webhost is because they have a much faster connection which means that they can provide quicker and more reliable service. This will eliminate your site appearing to be slow during high traffic periods.
MySQL is the most popular open source database server in the world with more than 4 million installations powering websites, data warehouses, business applications, logging systems and more. MySQL is included in every package.
Like MySQL, PostgreSQL is another open source database software. We can add this at your request for free.
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. We always keep our version of PHP up to date by running only the latest stable version of PHP.
What control panels do you use?
We use CPanel as it is very stable and user friendly.
What is the difference between an affiliate and a reseller?
Affiliates usually charge you for the initial setup of your hosting account then let the web host they are affiliated with to do the monthly billing, tech support etc. Resellers on the other hand, handle everything themselves. BeachSideHosting.com is a reseller.
What is SSL and how is it used?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is the standard internet protocol for secure communications. It is a connection-based protocol that uses encryption to offer authentication, integrity, and non-repudiation. SSL is used typically between server and client to secure the connection.
What are digital certificates?
Digital certificates are digital documents that validate the authenticity of both parties.
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