Email & The Web..

There is a lot of confusion regarding the internet, email, broadband providers and owning your own domain.

ISP's (broadband suppliers) for some reason seem to make this a lot more complicated than it really is.

 

Why? Not really sure. Perhaps it's short-sightedness on their part or just the fact that they want your money and don't really care. This is not the case with all providers, but the 'big guys don't aren't really interested in you as an individual, thay are looking to satisfy the share holders and get bragging rights...."We are the leading provider in the UK"

How many times have you heard that. But it's irrelevant if the customers are not happy or the service is poor.

 

Domain Name..

This is the name by which you or your company is known as on the Internet. (eg: www.mycompany.co.uk). You can create your own name, and register it with a number of different companies.
PLEASE NOTE: You never actually own the name, you just 'rent it' for an annual fee.

As a guide .co.uk is normally around £10.00 for 2 years and .com is £25.00 per year. There are a growing number of other 'extensions' eg: .net / .org / .biz etc. The prices of these vary depending on the ISP.

 

We can recommend www.easily.co.uk as an ISP. We have been using them for many years and they offer sensible pricing, excellent support and free email forwarding for up to 20 addresses (the benefit of which will become clearer if you ream the Email Addresses section).

 

Email Addresses..

Another misconception is that you have to have an email address as provided by your broadband provider. This is not so. Let's say - for arguments sake - that you are with AOL and you have an email address mrsmith@aol.com. You now find a better offer with another provider. You DO NOT have to lose your AOL email address. You also DO NOT have to use the new email address they offer you. Remember.. these email addresses are offered free by the provider as part of the broadband package, doesn't mean you have to use them!

 

Hosting..

You need this to host a website. Hosting means renting space on a webserver so that you have somewhere to put your website / webpages. Again there are numerous providers and the type of site you have will determine, to a certain extent what sort of hosting you need. Some broadband providers offer a small amount of space as part of their package, but this is normally only suitable for a basic static site. Eg: A site that does not require too much storage (for photos or images) or require a database or shopping cart. If you are a large company and require a lot of space or complete control over your site, the best option may be to have a dedicated server. PLEASE NOTE: These are not cheap (£1000+ / year) and require proper administration and maintenance by qualified personnel.

On average, hosting will cost somewhere in the region of £60 - £80 per year.

In the majority of cases, you will also get POP3 mailboxes (the number of which vary from host to host). This means you can have somewhere to store emails, as well as create email accounts.

The most popular & common type of hosting is Linux / Apache / PHP. The other is Windows. We recommend Linux over Windows as it tends to be cheaper and there is much more support readily available.