What is website hosting?
Website hosting is generally the server space that your website occupies on a server. If a domain is compared to your car’s number plate, then hosting is like registration to drive on the road for that year.
What is involved in maintaining my website?
Maintenance is the process of backing up and updating data. It will ensure that your website is running at its optimum speed. Minimise the risk of malicious attacks, keep up with the latest software updates and keep your files safe and backed up if anything happens to the server or undesired edits are made. So it’s important to update such things as your 3rd party plug-ins and software versions and ensure that you have backups of your web designs. Other things that can go wrong may include broken links, missing maps or elements on your website due to mismatching or an old version of software and plug-ins.
Hosting and Maintenance Package:
$330 per year
- Server space with siteground hosting on a dedicated cpanel (control panel) and full access if requested
- SSL certificate (gives your site the padlock on the left of the address – more secure, better Google ranking)
- Cpanel backup with any significant changes or six months (whichever is first)
- Design backups – cloud-based backup via updraft when plug-ins are updated
- Support if the website goes down or anything stops performing as it’s supposed to
- Email and phone reminders when hosting renewal is due and payable
- Latest updates: WordPress, Updraft Premium, Wordfence security alerts, Yoast SEO, All of these plus the Premium DIVI theme and PHP version – Equals optimal speed and performance for the site.
Renewing your domain!
Your domain renewal can be easily taken care of by having an auto-renew option with your domain provider and up to date payment details. Your domain provider ‘I use Crazy Domains’ will email when your renewal is about to happen. As extra insurance, you can also set up your domain to be paid for 5-10 years in advance.
So what happens if I don’t renew my domain?
You lose ownership of that name until you pay for it again and this can involve a waiting period of up to 3 months. This can be very inconvenient and even worse if someone else has put a reservation on that domain name.
Renewing your hosting
Hosting is normally charged as an add-on per year by the domain provider or a 3rd party such as the web designer.
At Sunshine Design we send out a reminder invoice by email and also follow up by phone well before the due date to make sure the client requires hosting for each year. There is also a grace period if payment is a bit late.
If the client indicates that hosting is not required, then the website domain will be redirected or deactivated from the Sunshine Design server. If the client requires any files, they are available from archived backups which we can supply. They can be requested by the client or can be reactivated at a later date by Sunshine Design for a nominal cost. We do however recommend that hosting is not interrupted to maintain credible status with search engines.
At Sunshine design, we store your website data such as images and databases on a control panel during the time of hosting. We also do regular cpanel backups of the site within the server, plus store those backups remotely in the case that the hosting space is somehow compromised or not renewed.
The control panel usually looks something like this next image. From the control panel you are able to update software, redirect emails and domains, do installations, back up your files and a whole bunch of other stuff.
At Sunshine Design we manage all of the maintenance of the site via the control panel and also via the backend of the WordPress site. If we have any issues with the server the chat line is available 24/7 to us. We use inmotion hosting because they are one of the top website hosting servers in the world, plus they are great at sorting out and helping with the finer details.
Below are some client deactivated sites that may still have an active domain but the client no longer requires hosting. This may be because the business is no longer running or they no longer wish to host through our server. For now, they are being redirected to this page. Eventually, they will be removed from the server completely. They can be reactivated on this server or the cpanel files can be loaded onto another hosting provider at a later date.
