Episode 8: Brisbane Hosting and Website Design

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[00:00:00]  Saul: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Web Design Brisbane Podcast. This is episode number eight. And today's episode is entitled, Website Hosting and Website Design. My name is Saul Edmonds. And as usual, I am joined by the lovely Gillian Smith.

[00:00:14]  Gillian: Good morning, Saul.  Hello, everyone.

[00:00:16]  Saul: Hello, everyone. Yes, we are the Co-founders and creative directors of Roundhouse, the creative agency, a local business with a passion for helping our clients grow.  Over to you, Gill.

[00:00:25]  Gillian: Okay, well, today we're looking at hosting and website design solutions for small business. Our goal is to help small business owners, start-ups and entrepreneurs in the city of Brisbane, Australia, take the opportunity to the next level with brilliant website design. If you're from another location, or city, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. And we hope we can help you grow your business in the online space. So today, it's all about hosting and website design. 

[00:00:53]  Saul: Okay, let's go through these topics.

[00:00:54]  Gillian: Okay, well, first of all, Saul, tell everybody, what is website hosting because some people actually unsure about that.

[00:01:01]  Saul: Yeah, now, that's right. And that's a really valid point to website hosting. If you just think of your website itself, where you go and visit a website, it has to reside somewhere online, so basically, if you think of it like an address your house, if you live in a house, which most people do, I guess,

[00:01:21]  Gill: or unit

[00:01:22] Saul: Your unit, or even if you live on a boat, for that matter, most of the time, your boat. It's (mod), your boat is mod, or your house resides at some location. So for a website, it resides on a computer server somewhere. So every website is stored, like any data on your computer, it's stored somewhere online, and there's servers, there's a whole range of different hosting worldwide. You may have seen, you can go online, and you can purchase hosting this certain amount of space to host your website or to host anything for that matter but because your website is essentially information that like anything on your computer's a set of data that has to be stored somewhere online, then that's what website hosting is. 

[00:02:25]  Gillian: You basically have your website, and you have your website hosting. So your website has to leave some way your online. 

[00:02:32]  Saul: Yeah, that's right. It has to be stored somewhere in order for now. It's like if you go to your computer, and you open up a file of the chief made in Word, it opens it up in Word, but that file is stored somewhere on your hard drive. It's really not that different for a website, it's stored somewhere on a on a drive on a server somewhere in the world.

[00:02:58]  Gillian: Okay, well enough important element of website hosting is domain names.

[00:03:03]  Saul: Yeah, your domain name. So if you think of this is another metaphor, I suppose you would say. Your domain name, once again, your... 

[00:03:15]  Gillian: house.

[00:03:19]  Saul: To register a name, like a house,  our website. domain name is Roundhouse.cc so every domain name has an extension as is cc. A lot of people ask why that's because we thought it was interesting. That's the only reason. And then you've got .com .au for specifically for Australian business.com and a million other extension so do whatever is an extension of your domain name.

[00:03:53]  Gillian: Does Google prefer you to have any particular domain extensions? Is there any reason why should choose dot com that? au or  suggest the.net?

[00:04:02]  Saul: Well, to some extent that there is truth instead of saying that for Australian businesses a.com that I you is preferable, and it has some level of impact for how your rank here in Australia but... 

[00:04:17]  Gillian: Actually, surely have to disagree with that. It has no impact whatsoever. (inaudible) because we've got CC, and it doesn't make any difference to what may impact your rankings a little, although this is changing over time is where your website is hosted. But what's important is when you set up your location, in your behind the scenes, no matter preferences and descriptions and all that sort of thing.

[00:04:41]  Saul: Yeah, now, that's true and ...  

[00:04:42]  Gillian: It absolutely doesn't matter.

[00:04:45]  Gillian:  if we're good (inaudible) 

[00:04:45]  Saul: Yeah, well, I'll just go back on that topic to his, instead of saying, it doesn't matter  in the extent that it's not going to make you rank better, but it like a million different things for website optimization and other things. It does play a role in more not matter for you ranking on the first page of Google, but it does play a part and all those little parts to play a role.  

[00:04:46]  Saul: No, well, yeah 

[00:05:03]  Gillian: I think that the advantage of it is that it sends a very clear message to users that you will try.

[00:05:25]  Saul: Yeah, that's the primary thing is that these extensions because some new ones are still being made, like .house, .club, not quite, almost anything yet. They don't have what as far as I know, but they probably should, because it sounds great. But at the same time, they are many to indicate where you're on the world and the country specific extensions and here in Australia .com that I use specifically for business, in order to register for a .com. that you demand, you have to have an ABN and or ICN, in order to do that and it's going to have a direct relationship with the name that you do and you're always registered for two years at a time.

[00:06:22]  Gillian: Okay, if you're just starting a new business, and you're getting your website sorted, will your website designer take care of your hosting, and any domain services that you might need?  

[00:06:33]  Saul: Okay, so I know we do. But not everyone does that. Sometimes those services already provided and handled by the IT person that a business might deal with, they handle all that sort of things already for them. And so sometimes it might come to the website designer, just has to do their job, create a website, and then migrated over if it's something like a WordPress site, to existing hosting, or in our instance, if people don't have that setup already, or they don't want to provide, they want someone like us to handle everything for them, which a lot of people do for simplicity, and so they know who they're dealing with, for everything, relating to their website, hosting that email, and anything else really, for that matter, including the registration of the domains as well, sometimes then doing it so they build it, And then hosted is a great advantage for a lot of people. 

[00:07:38]  Gillian:  It's stress free, and  everything's going to be sorted. So (first things) to worry about,

[00:07:42]  Saul:  There's  essential moving parts, once again, which for a lot of people equals stress and really not knowing what's going on. 

[00:07:52]  Gillian: Okay, well, when now your website is finished, and you deciding on a website host, if you're taking care of it yourself, what do you need to look out for with a website hosted services?

[00:08:03]  Saul: Okay, so first thing is to say, all website hosting is not created equal. That is one of the key things to remember. So while this is a bit of a broad, a broad thing to sort of, to paint is that don't ever go for your super cheap website hosting because what it generally always means is you've got terrible customer service, it might not necessarily mean that the hosting is going to be horrendous in terms of the actual technicalities of it but sometimes it will but what it will almost definitely mean is that when you've got a problem, it's going to be a lot harder to get onto somebody to actually help you out. Because when they're charging that much, if they're charging, like  $2 a month for hosting, they're not going to be able to afford nor do they want to pay for good support. Yeah, for that so that's a really cool

[00:09:09]  Gillian: Equals peace of mind, especially for people in business with their email and their website.

[00:09:13]  Saul: Yeah, that's right. There's usually never a time it might not happen straight away, it might not happen for some years down the track, but when you do need help for it, then having some level of support for website hosting is important so website hosting could range, per year, some will pay per month, usually per year, we charge per year. So anything from 234 hundred a year upwards. But that will also depend on what you're hosting to, if you're going to be hosting a very simple four-page site, then you don't really need very robust hosting. But if you're going to be hosting some sort of application, where you're going to be on a very large ecommerce site that especially and this is a really important point is that  just as a general scenario, if you've got an e commerce site that has some thousands of products on it, is having  10s of thousands of people coming to that site every day, they're spending a lot of time, the amount of data that's coming through the server is going to be a lot bigger so the server that you have your hosting on needs to be a lot more robust and then there's other security things in moment that too.

[00:10:40]  Gillian: Okay, we'll just start talking about website hosting providers. We've said the cheap ones, caution there but regarding premium services, what extra things can you expect from a premium, web hosting solution?

[00:10:54]  Saul: Premium web hosting solutions, some of that, like I said before, will really come down to the level of service, you have to a lot of it will also, depending on whether it's going to be specific for ecommerce hosting or not, will also come down to the level of security that they provide as well, whether they have automatic or they have auto saving versions of your of your site as well, like every day, or whether they don't. You might or you may know of somebody who has had some situation where the site was even hacked, they didn't have a version of this site save or a recent version. And then really, it's not quite game over. But some people have to start again. And then that comes down to the quality of what's actually on offer. 

[00:11:52]  Gillian: So your choice of web hosting provider has a lot to do with your website security, and sharing everything? 

[00:11:59]  Saul: Yes,  that's obviously one important part of it. It's also because most people, once they get hosting, they don't think about it again. But then that comes down to not only the hosting, like we're saying, but the level of support and who you're dealing with, too because website hosting and website and the support, as far as I'm concerned, should quite intertwined  because  it's like insurance you need it. But you only really think about it when something happens and then when something happens, you need to have some security there and good people to help you out  so I think that's it for today, guys. Thanks so much for listening. Before we go, please don't forget to rate review and subscribe to this podcast. We'd love to hear your feedback. We're on a journey to help local Brisbane businesses grow their opportunities online and exceed their goals. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.