When deciding on a hosting environment for your site, there are a number of things to consider. In order to get the full functionality you designed into the site, you’ll need to know what kind of site you’re building, how much traffic your site will get, what kind of security you need, and more.
Here are some of the common components and services to consider when selecting a hosting environment.
Redundancy – Redundancy is a hardware configuration that refers to having an back-up server that will become active in case that your primary server goes down.
Load Balancing – Load balancing is the same concept as redundancy wherein site traffic is split between multiple servers to serve all users faster and provide backup for outages. Websites with very high traffic typically use load balancing because a single server could not provide a high quality user experience.
CDN – A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver webpages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server. All of the static content on the site comes from the closest possible location to the person viewing the page, and the dynamic content comes from the server itself. The benefits of using a CDN are better performance and availability, and they are typically used by high-traffic sites with international users.
Security – Whether your site is ecommerce or it collects and stores sensitive information (such as personal or credit card data), your environment should be protected by SSL encryption. Trusted SSL providers ensure the encrypted transfer of sensitive information originating on your website as well as authentication of the delivery server at the other end of your communication. SSL Certificates are a low-cost solution to provide peace-of-mind and credibility to your customers ensuring their information will not end up in the hands of criminals.
File Storage – If you have a small, lower-traffic site, uploading files to the server will not take much space. But larger sites that have lots of graphics and other media (like videos) will require a hosting environment/plan that accommodates the amount of space your files will be using.
If you are unsure what kind of hosting environment will best suit your site’s needs, contact Starkmedia. We can help you find the best fit.
