Internet

The phrase in the title does not, unfortunately for most of us, refer to a butler who brings coffee to your desk in the morning. It refers to a computer in the office that has a few special tasks to perform on behalf of others. So, perhaps in a different way it's a little like a butler.

You could store all your files, emails, photos and more on your own computer. You could use only your computer for access to the Internet, printing, faxing and more. But that setup has some potential downsides, especially when your office grows to hold multiple desktops.

In reviewing web hosting plans, many web site owners are faced at some point with the decision of whether or not to pay for a dedicated server. A dedicated server is one which holds your site(s) exclusively. It's not shared with other sites. You then have the option to put one site or many on that piece of hardware.

But the decision is never easy. There are multiple considerations to take into account, far beyond just the higher dollar outlay that inevitably accompanies a dedicated server option.

New domain names are registered all the time, and ones previously registered expired. Sometimes that's the result of simple neglect. The owner of the name chose not to renew his or her ownership, so the name became available for someone else to use. In rare cases, a highly original mind managed to think of a new one. In the other common scenarios, someone chose to just let it go or sell it.

Among the more useful innovations in computing, actually invented decades ago, are the twin ideas of redundancy and failover. These fancy words name very common sense concepts. When one computer (or part) fails, switch to another. Doing that seamlessly and quickly versus slowly with disruption defines one difference between good hosting and bad.

Things To Think About

You can often get a substantial discount off web hosting fees by sharing a server with other sites. Or, you may have multiple sites of your own on the same system. But, just as sharing a house can have benefits and drawbacks, so too with a server.

One thing most web site owners have little time for is... anything! Anything other than focusing on their site content and the business or service it supports and the information it provides, that is. That means that administration often suffers, as it frequently must. Theres only so much time in the day.

But the one thing that you should never let slide are backups. They are like insurance. You rarely need it (you hope), but when you do you need it very badly.

Few things are less exciting than managing the disk space that always seems to be in too short a supply. But few things are more important to the health and well being of your site.  

The most obvious aspect of managing disk space is the need to have enough. If you have only a few dozen web pages, that's not an issue. But as the amount of information (web pages, database content and more) grows, the quantity of free space goes down.

That's important for two reasons.

The choice of whether or not to try to administer your own web site brings with it a host, pun intended, of issues.

For most web site owners, the primary focus is naturally on creating, maintaining and enhancing the site. That often is just part of managing an entire business, for which the web site is just the means to an end.  

When you build a web site, you often provide a means for users to communicate with you. One of the most common "add-ons" to a web site is the addition of some kind of email access. Email is used to sign users up for newsletters, provide communication for administrative issues and a hundred other uses. But, as everyone sadly knows, email problems can occur.

Anything related to the Internet or computers is bound to introduce technical issues pretty soon. One of the earliest that novice web site owners encounter is FTP, which is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol. Seeing it spelled out, it''s easy to see why those in the know quickly move to speaking in short hand.