Design Affect - What can go wrong with hosting?

BACK

But what could possibly go wrong
with my hosting service?

Did you ever hear about how I taught myself to sail?
Well, I bought a book, rented a sail boat and had them point me toward the middle of the bay.

However, before I stepped foot in the boat I wanted to know one thing: "How can I tip the boat over?" Why would I ask this question before even wanting to know the finer points of sailing? Because the last thing I wanted to do was sink the boat and get wet. So I wanted to find out how I could do that, AND THEN NOT DO IT!
You may want to consider learning the equivalent of what CAN GO WRONG by selecting the wrong hosting service, and then don't do it.
Perhaps you've been tempted by many hosting offers (and there are lots of them) such as FREE HOSTING, or PAY US THIS MUCH AND NO MORE FOR LIFE, or $19.95 AND WE GIVE YOU EVERYTHING. HOST WITH US AND WE'LL MAKE YOU BREAKFAST.
Maybe you've thought, hey I could save a little money each month. If price were the only criteria, this might be true. However, you do get what you pay for. These companies or individuals are there to make a profit and to get the prices down very low they may cut corners on the very things that cost you more in the long run. Things like lost business, more of your personal time, more of your headaches, more of your worry, complaints from web site visitors, long distance calls, trouble shooting, paying for technical advice, and maybe moving your web site to various servers trying to find the right one.
Over the years of developing web sites and hosting them on the internet, we've discovered the equivalent of "how to tip the boat over" with regards to what can go wrong with web hosting. The following is only a partial list, but hopefully one of two things will happen:
1) you will learn what to avoid and what to look for should you decide to find your own hosting provider, or
2) you will appreciate what Design Affect takes care of for you and sign up with a relieved smile on your face.

The following section will share what can go wrong (blue border) and what Design Affect does to prevent it (yellow border).

1

Some providers may not monitor their servers very closely. If a server crashes, your web site could go offline for many hours before coming back online. In the meantime, all of your visitors are shut out of your site.

Our servers are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

2

Although many providers initially state they will not advertise on your site, some will do so to make more money. During the first few months you may not have any advertisements associated with your site. However, later on down the road you may start seeing advertisements appearing on your site.

There are NO advertisements from us on your site. If Cliff Durfee designed your site, a small button will appear on the home page to give credit and provide a way for visitors to tell the web designer of any problems or suggestions.

3

Some providers do not schedule frequent backup of web sites. Should they crash, they may load an older version of your web site back onto the system. This older version could reflect older prices, offers and information that could cause you trouble due to false advertising. They may not even alert you to the fact that they had a crash, so you might not even know to reload all your pages. This could take a lot of your time just to continually monitor your site to make sure it is what you want.

Daily and weekly backups are taken on our server. In addition to that, because you have "supervised hosting" by Design Affect, and there is server monitoring 7 days/24 hours a week, there is virtually no risk in your site not being up, online and accurate all the time. And, you don't have to take the time out of your busy schedule to keep reviewing/double checking your pages.

4

Some of the "free" or very low cost hosting services don't provide for direct FTP file uploads. Instead, they have a system that requires much more time to finally get the files uploaded and intact. This can cost you more time by your webmaster or yourself.

Design Affect takes care of all of your file uploads via very high speed direct FTP uploads. There is a reduced price on your hosting fee should have Design Affect handle this for you since a password account isn't necessary for you. For a slightly larger fee, you can have the direct FTP password access and upload yourself.

5

Locating a reported problem could be next to impossible due to lack of technical support, or at the minimum, consume much of your time and cost many telephone calls. For example, someone sends you an email and says they couldn't access your site, or, the site loaded so slowly they couldn't view it, or, they tried to send in your form and it didn't work... etc.

With hosting through Design Affect, you just let us know. We'll track down the difficulty and get back to you. You don't have to make tons of calls, deal with technicians, try to figure out what's happening, or waste lots of time on the telephone.

6

The provider/hosting service may upgrade their equipment and/or software which could cause problems on some of your web pages. They may not inform you of the changes. Some of your pages may not work properly until you discover it, and then you have the challenge of figuring out what needs to be changed to work with their new configuration. (examples of this are available upon request)

Design Affect stays in close contact with technicians and watches for any future changes. Usually, any alteration necessary to keep your web site working properly are not even billed since you're hosting with us. You don't need to experience a minute of downtime or frustration. That's what Supervised Web Site Hosting can do for you. (If you haven't read the description of Supervised Web Site Hosting, please Click Here.)

7

Some providers make additional income from selling information. Your email addresses and other information could be part of what does not remain private.

Your privacy with Design Affect is secure. No information is either sold or given out.

8

The speed and access time to your web pages may degrade or fluctuate widely. The provider may oversell the BANDWIDTH which basically means the visitors to your web site may have to wait excessive amounts of time to view your pages. To get your business initially, they may put you on a high priority and fast server. After a month or two, they may switch you over to a different server that is vastly overworked. Or, they may continue to put web sites on one server that gets overloaded.

We use bandwidth and network monitoring to insure that data is being transmitted as quickly as possible and balance all the servers so that our bandwidth is not exceeded. We also do not allow any X-rated sites which are notorious for consuming too much of the resources of a particular server

9

You may not need shopping carts, credit card processing, electronic check processing, automatic deposit, ordering system, secure server, TrueSpeech Steaming Audio, autoresponders, POP3 accounts, direct FTP access, SSI (Server Side Includes), dedicated server, custom cgi scripts, custom javascripts, or other advanced features right away. With some providers, these features may not be available, may not be using the right software for you, or due to lack of technical support-- may be very costly to implement using their system. This might create a need to switch servers when this need presents itself.

All these items are available through Design Affect, and as your needs grow there is no need to make switch in your provider. In addition, since we are already very acquainted with these features, you can save in development costs. Development on other servers is provided by Design Affect, however, additional costs may be incurred based on the time to obtain adequate information, time to work out problems due to unique characteristics of that server, and perhaps extra time if that particular provider provides poor technical support and poor documentation about their server.

10

Some providers give little protection against intruders and hackers that may want to damage files or steal information.

We are constantly on guard and install security patches on the servers to protect against intruders. Also, we provide special secure servers when information such as credit card numbers, data bases, etc. need greater levels of protection.

11

Things may be going satisfactory on some servers for periods of time until they have a hardware failure with no available spare parts to fix the problem. They may also lack immediate attention of technical staff members to even diagnosis the problem. Your website may be offline for an extended period of time. You might lose valuable business during this time. Unfortunately, you might not even know it happened since many providers will not volunteer information about their downtime unless you just happen to catch them.

We keep spare parts for all servers to insure rapid replacement of any failed components with a highly qualified technical staff and we have immediately accessible technical support. Since this provider has opened doors for business in 1995, we have had an amazing level of 99.9% reliability and "uptime."

12

Of course servers are computers and they run on electricity. Brown outs, power drops or extended power outages can create a constant problem for some providers and result in your web site being out of service. And, if the power outaged cause loss of disk information, you might encounter the other problems associated with them reloading an obsolete version of your web site depending on how frequent they take backups (if any).

All our servers have battery power backup to protect against brief power outages and voltage spikes. The entire server room in backed up by a stand-by generator to protect against long power outages, and backups are taken DAILY to protect your information. Though most of these things are invisible to you, we feel they are important to give you the kind of service and reliability that you deserve.

13

Some providers do not provide you with your own IP address and switch it on you. This can cause problems on some of the older browsers and it keeps you from having a POP account should you need one in the future.

We give you a dedicated IP address.

14

The computer that your web site is hosted in is called a server. Some providers have a variety of newer/faster computers, or older/slower ones. The speed of the computer used influences how fast the server can send out the pages of your web site. Your site may be placed on a slow computer, and even if they have a fast internet connection and haven't oversold their bandwidth, the response speed may be sluggish.

We use Silicon Graphics, Inc. SGI computers that are specially configured for giving you blazingly fast speed. They are among the fastest server computers in the world. If you would like more information on the equipment, software and internet connection mentioned in these items 14-16, please Click Here.

15

The operating system and server software that your provider uses influences the reliability and speed of all the operations of the server. Needless to say, there is a variety of operating systems and software available and not all of them are good, yet some providers a) don't purchase the best b) don't maintain and update properly c) do not have the technical expertise to track down problems, resolve them and avoid future occurrences.

We are proud to say we use one of the finest operating systems and server software available. We use UNIX through the IRIX operating system and the server software is Apache. We have an outstanding technical staff that updates and maintains the software to optimize performance, reliability and uptime. If you would like more information on the equipment, software and internet connection mentioned in these items 14-16, please Click Here.

16

The provider may not have a direct or even a close connection to the backbone of the internet, and the connection itself may not be a fast one. This can cause each page and image of your website to take much longer to load. During times of the day when internet traffic is heavy, the problem can be compounded and delays can be so long that your visitors give up on trying to see your website. This compounding effect is particularly present if the provider does not have a connection that is close to the backbone so basically each packet of information, files, images etc. have to be shuttled from computer to computer. Each "hop" takes time. It's like the difference between traveling on an express train with no stops, or a train that stops at every single station.

We have an extremely fast direct connection to UUNET's backbone. This is a T3 connection which is approximately 28 times faster than a T1 connection. This connection is direct to the internet backbone. It's like we not only have an express train, it's turbo powered! If you would like more information on the equipment, software and internet connection mentioned in these items 14-16, please Click Here.

17

(there are many more... but guess that's enough for now)

18

BACK

1
	Some providers may not monitor their servers very closely. If a server crashes, your web site could go offline for many hours before coming back online. In the meantime, all of your visitors are shut out of your site.
		Our servers are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
2
	Although many providers initially state they will not advertise on your site, some will do so to make more money. During the first few months you may not have any advertisements associated with your site. However, later on down the road you may start seeing advertisements appearing on your site.
		There are NO advertisements from us on your site. If Cliff Durfee designed your site, a small button will appear on the home page to give credit and provide a way for visitors to tell the web designer of any problems or suggestions.
3
	Some providers do not schedule frequent backup of web sites. Should they crash, they may load an older version of your web site back onto the system. This older version could reflect older prices, offers and information that could cause you trouble due to false advertising. They may not even alert you to the fact that they had a crash, so you might not even know to reload all your pages. This could take a lot of your time just to continually monitor your site to make sure it is what you want.
		Daily and weekly backups are taken on our server. In addition to that, because you have "supervised hosting" by Design Affect, and there is server monitoring 7 days/24 hours a week, there is virtually no risk in your site not being up, online and accurate all the time. And, you don't have to take the time out of your busy schedule to keep reviewing/double checking your pages.
4
	Some of the "free" or very low cost hosting services don't provide for direct FTP file uploads. Instead, they have a system that requires much more time to finally get the files uploaded and intact. This can cost you more time by your webmaster or yourself.
		Design Affect takes care of all of your file uploads via very high speed direct FTP uploads. There is a reduced price on your hosting fee should have Design Affect handle this for you since a password account isn't necessary for you. For a slightly larger fee, you can have the direct FTP password access and upload yourself.
5
	Locating a reported problem could be next to impossible due to lack of technical support, or at the minimum, consume much of your time and cost many telephone calls. For example, someone sends you an email and says they couldn't access your site, or, the site loaded so slowly they couldn't view it, or, they tried to send in your form and it didn't work... etc.
		With hosting through Design Affect, you just let us know. We'll track down the difficulty and get back to you. You don't have to make tons of calls, deal with technicians, try to figure out what's happening, or waste lots of time on the telephone.
6
	The provider/hosting service may upgrade their equipment and/or software which could cause problems on some of your web pages. They may not inform you of the changes. Some of your pages may not work properly until you discover it, and then you have the challenge of figuring out what needs to be changed to work with their new configuration. (examples of this are available upon request)
		Design Affect stays in close contact with technicians and watches for any future changes. Usually, any alteration necessary to keep your web site working properly are not even billed since you're hosting with us. You don't need to experience a minute of downtime or frustration. That's what Supervised Web Site Hosting can do for you. (If you haven't read the description of Supervised Web Site Hosting, please Click Here.)

7
	Some providers make additional income from selling information. Your email addresses and other information could be part of what does not remain private.
		Your privacy with Design Affect is secure. No information is either sold or given out.
8
	The speed and access time to your web pages may degrade or fluctuate widely. The provider may oversell the BANDWIDTH which basically means the visitors to your web site may have to wait excessive amounts of time to view your pages. To get your business initially, they may put you on a high priority and fast server. After a month or two, they may switch you over to a different server that is vastly overworked. Or, they may continue to put web sites on one server that gets overloaded.
		We use bandwidth and network monitoring to insure that data is being transmitted as quickly as possible and balance all the servers so that our bandwidth is not exceeded. We also do not allow any X-rated sites which are notorious for consuming too much of the resources of a particular server
9
	You may not need shopping carts, credit card processing, electronic check processing, automatic deposit, ordering system, secure server, TrueSpeech Steaming Audio, autoresponders, POP3 accounts, direct FTP access, SSI (Server Side Includes), dedicated server, custom cgi scripts, custom javascripts, or other advanced features right away. With some providers, these features may not be available, may not be using the right software for you, or due to lack of technical support-- may be very costly to implement using their system. This might create a need to switch servers when this need presents itself.
		All these items are available through Design Affect, and as your needs grow there is no need to make switch in your provider. In addition, since we are already very acquainted with these features, you can save in development costs. Development on other servers is provided by Design Affect, however, additional costs may be incurred based on the time to obtain adequate information, time to work out problems due to unique characteristics of that server, and perhaps extra time if that particular provider provides poor technical support and poor documentation about their server.
10
	Some providers give little protection against intruders and hackers that may want to damage files or steal information.
		We are constantly on guard and install security patches on the servers to protect against intruders. Also, we provide special secure servers when information such as credit card numbers, data bases, etc. need greater levels of protection.
11
	Things may be going satisfactory on some servers for periods of time until they have a hardware failure with no available spare parts to fix the problem. They may also lack immediate attention of technical staff members to even diagnosis the problem. Your website may be offline for an extended period of time. You might lose valuable business during this time. Unfortunately, you might not even know it happened since many providers will not volunteer information about their downtime unless you just happen to catch them.
		We keep spare parts for all servers to insure rapid replacement of any failed components with a highly qualified technical staff and we have immediately accessible technical support. Since this provider has opened doors for business in 1995, we have had an amazing level of 99.9% reliability and "uptime."
12
	Of course servers are computers and they run on electricity. Brown outs, power drops or extended power outages can create a constant problem for some providers and result in your web site being out of service. And, if the power outaged cause loss of disk information, you might encounter the other problems associated with them reloading an obsolete version of your web site depending on how frequent they take backups (if any).
		All our servers have battery power backup to protect against brief power outages and voltage spikes. The entire server room in backed up by a stand-by generator to protect against long power outages, and backups are taken DAILY to protect your information. Though most of these things are invisible to you, we feel they are important to give you the kind of service and reliability that you deserve.

13
	Some providers do not provide you with your own IP address and switch it on you. This can cause problems on some of the older browsers and it keeps you from having a POP account should you need one in the future.
		We give you a dedicated IP address.
14
	The computer that your web site is hosted in is called a server. Some providers have a variety of newer/faster computers, or older/slower ones. The speed of the computer used influences how fast the server can send out the pages of your web site. Your site may be placed on a slow computer, and even if they have a fast internet connection and haven't oversold their bandwidth, the response speed may be sluggish.
		We use Silicon Graphics, Inc. SGI computers that are specially configured for giving you blazingly fast speed. They are among the fastest server computers in the world. If you would like more information on the equipment, software and internet connection mentioned in these items 14-16, please Click Here.
15
	The operating system and server software that your provider uses influences the reliability and speed of all the operations of the server. Needless to say, there is a variety of operating systems and software available and not all of them are good, yet some providers a) don't purchase the best b) don't maintain and update properly c) do not have the technical expertise to track down problems, resolve them and avoid future occurrences.
		We are proud to say we use one of the finest operating systems and server software available. We use UNIX through the IRIX operating system and the server software is Apache. We have an outstanding technical staff that updates and maintains the software to optimize performance, reliability and uptime. If you would like more information on the equipment, software and internet connection mentioned in these items 14-16, please Click Here.
16
	The provider may not have a direct or even a close connection to the backbone of the internet, and the connection itself may not be a fast one. This can cause each page and image of your website to take much longer to load. During times of the day when internet traffic is heavy, the problem can be compounded and delays can be so long that your visitors give up on trying to see your website. This compounding effect is particularly present if the provider does not have a connection that is close to the backbone so basically each packet of information, files, images etc. have to be shuttled from computer to computer. Each "hop" takes time. It's like the difference between traveling on an express train with no stops, or a train that stops at every single station.
		We have an extremely fast direct connection to UUNET's backbone. This is a T3 connection which is approximately 28 times faster than a T1 connection. This connection is direct to the internet backbone. It's like we not only have an express train, it's turbo powered! If you would like more information on the equipment, software and internet connection mentioned in these items 14-16, please Click Here.
17
	(there are many more... but guess that's enough for now)

18