Generally speaking the servers that are connected to the Internet are similar to the computers that are used at home and work but large numbers of these machines are all grouped together under one roof in what is termed a data centre. These centres will have security, power supply backup, some data backups and a support staff on duty 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The data centres cost millions of pounds to build but in return for the out lay they hire out the use of the computers to people, companies, etc to put their web sites on. They hire out he computer by the month or by the year and in various sizes. You can hire just enough space for a single site, an allocation of storage space, or entire computers. Some data centres allow you to put your own computer into their infrastructure but the best we believe is a purpose built centre where everything is set-up to work together and will provide the most reliable service with maximum up time. It is now becoming easier to put your home computer on the Internet as a server using the ADSL from British Telecom to provide a permanent connection to the Internet. This would only be able to deal with a few visitors to your web sites and would require around the clock maintenance to give any sort of acceptable service so consequently is not viable.

Having decided to select a data centre type of provider then the next question is what operating system is required. This question has only two possible solutions, namely UNIX or Microsoft Windows. The operating system is the software that controls the computer your web site will be hosted on and dictates what your site can do. Each operating system supports different programming languages or different versions of the same languages and also there are different versions and types of the two operating systems. If you wish to have a simple site with e-mail then either operating system, sometimes called operating platform, will be suitable. If on the other hand special systems such as databases are required, then careful selection is required.

Hosting can be obtained very cheaply or even for nothing but normally the hosting companies will cover their extensive costs by using your site for their advertising or will put your free site in amongst other paying sites where by there are a very large number of sites per server. The end result is poor service. One of the biggest problems with free hosting is the lack of control the user has and support for programming languages. It is worth paying a small amount of money to use a commercial grade server but reduce the cost by only paying for the services you actually want.

A cautionary tale regarding e-mail.

You can get e-mail from almost any hosting company server as long as you can connect to it either directly or via the Internet. If however you wish to send e-mails using your site name e.g. sales@jr-websites.co.uk then in many cases now you must connect to the Internet via the company that hosts your site or e-mail address. Some hosting companies now will only allow you to send or receive e-mail if you connect directly to them using their telephone dial up number and of course pay their charges.

JR Websites have the use of several servers in a data centre but because we will try to match the hosting with the web site requirements we may use different data centres to give the client what we believe to be the best service. So JR Websites work like insurance brokers in that we will try to get the clients the best match for their requirements and supply advice on facilities they require in order to provide the complete package. As resellers we offer some protection in that:-

• · If we were to stop trading your domain name will still belong to you as we always register domain names in the name of the client. Your site can be moved to a new company. You will loose the helpful support of JR Websites and their integration skills plus any maintenance JR Websites do for you.

• · If the hosting company were to cease trading JR Websites would find a new host and transfer your site and domain name for you.