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Website Hosting
A web hosting service is an Internet service that
allows individuals and organisations to provide their own
websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are
companies that provide space on a server they own for use by
their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity,
typically in a data center. Webhosts can also provide data
center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers
they do not own to be located in their data center, called
collocation.
A web host is a service provider that
places your web site on a computer which is connected to the
internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way
to access your website. The computer that the web hosting
company uses is typically just like the computer you have at
home, the only difference being that it is set up to serve
up web sites and is therefore called a "server".
A web host will typically have a fast connection to the
Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many
servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so
that you can get your website up on the world wide web. |
| Cheap hosting is not always the right option,
here are some reasons why:
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- Some South African web hosting services don't actually host your
web site in South Africa, they use other countries like Germany or
America where they host your website. The problem with this is
because they are hosting so far away from South Africa you end up
with slow response times and you stand to loose visitors to your web
site as people become bored while waiting for your site page to
load.
- With other providers who host your site outside
of South Africa they are able to get cheaper deals for bandwidth (we
all know how expensive Telkom's rates are) that is why they can
charge you less and still make a profit.
- Lack of
service commitment - they don't have the necessary resources to
maintain their service commitment to you.
- Restricted services - no extra added value
services like web site optimisation, getting your website high on
the search engines.
- Older technology - server computers not updated and
server software not updated. Technology is ever changing and both
machines and software need to be updated, at least, annually.
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Most web companies do not own a datacenter, but rent
web space in a datacenter. EPNET Web Hosting
provides connectivity through
The Internet Solutions backbone. There are literally
thousands of web companies available in the market,
all with different types of plans and at different prices.
It can be hard to wade through all the options, especially
if you are completely new to hosting and just want to
get your website up on the web. All plans have
some basic common features.
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- Server Type This is the type of server software
that is running on the server. Windows 2003 server, Linux and Unix
are common server types. If you have a basic website then the server
type does not matter. If you have a more complex website that has
database functions and serves up dynamic pages, then the server type
will be more important
- Disk Space This is the amount of actual
space available to you for storing your website on the web server
hard drive
- Bandwidth / Month This is a measure of
how much website traffic is available to you. Every time somebody
looks at your website, data has to be passed over the Internet from
the web server where your site is hosted to the browser of the
person looking at your site. Bandwidth is a measure of how much
transfer is available. High traffic sites like Google for example
have very high bandwidth requirements, but the average site does not
- Email Accounts How many email accounts
you can have with the web hosting account.
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EPNET Web Hosting Features
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EPNET provides great features some of which you
will not find with other companies as follows: |
- 1 Gigabyte of Disk space
- Daily backups
- Microsoft Windows Servers
- ASP database active server pages
- MS SQL Server and MS Access Hosting
- Up to 3 FREE Email addresses
- Free Daily traffic analysis reports
- Free domain name
- Free support 24/7 365
- Unique hosting service: Free search engine
optimisation
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| EPNET Prices
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EPNET prices are not the cheapest around, but
you will find that we are well worth the price. The old
adage, "you get what you pay for", is most appropriate in
our web hosting plan, would you rather pay that few extra rands for reliability and competence than to find your web
site down for long periods at a stretch, costing you more
money than the few bucks you can save in hosting fees. |
| EPNET Web Hosting with FREE Search engine
optimisation
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| Free search engine optimisation. You will find that our
unique free web site optimisation service comes with every
hosting account. What is the use of a web site if no one can
find you? We use our
13 years of experience
optimising websites to give your site a boost on the
search engines. |
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Web Hosting and Free website traffic analysis
EPNET web site Tracker is Free with every
account and is a web based statistical service which tracks
and stores visitor data from your website in real time to
accurately illustrate detailed visitor behaviour as a direct
result of your online marketing. |
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Tracking and monitoring your visitors |
- Least and Most Visited Pages - Monitoring these stats can help
you identify usability and navigation problems with your site - and
measure the impact of the changes you make to address these
problems.
- To see how even a small change can increase the traffic to any
page, we suggest identifying a key page you would like to drive more
visitors to and modifying your Home page to give the link to it more
prominence. Then use your stats to monitor the impact.
- Top Referring Sites and URLs Use these statistics to uncover
hidden opportunities for increasing traffic to your site. One way to
do this is to identify the top referring sites and see if you can
negotiate better placement of the link to your site. This can be
quite worthwhile if their audience is the audience you wish to
target.
- Referring sites may also contribute to your traffic by
increasing your popularity rating with search engines. However,
before you start investing time in trading links, we recommend you
read this article about link popularity - and link importance.
- Top Referring Search Engines If most of the traffic
coming to your site from search engines isn't being sent from Yahoo,
Google, AOL and MSN, you may need to review your search engine
placement. Most e-business sites receive a majority of their search
engine traffic from these four because they have the majority of
search engine audience share.
- Top Search Words and Phrases. Paying attention to the keywords
and phrases that are and aren't included in your site statistics can
pay off. One of our clients had a mention of "lab equipment" on his
site but did not realize how many people were searching for "lab
equipment" until we helped him analyze his statistics. This
information resulted in the client modifying his site to better
serve and sell to his audience.
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