Hosting Your Website
Once your website is designed, you need to have it hosted somewhere so people can look at it. This involves putting it on a computer called a server that is permanently connected to the Internet, and giving the site its own unique address (URL) so people can find it.
Using the Word Pool to host your site
We offer two hosting options, both of which give you the benefit of
the fast commercial servers we use ourselves.
Option 1: If you want to have your own domain name, we can register it and host it for you. In this case, your domain name becomes the URL for your site and an optional extra allows you to use your domain name as your e-mail address. (You'll find more information on domain names here.)
Another optional extra is a statistics package which tells you how many people visit your site, how they found it and which pages they looked at. To show you how these work, you can see the statistics for our children's book site here. These are set for open access but yours can be password protected if you prefer.
Option 2: If you don't want your own domain name, we can host your site within one of our own. If you are a writer, your URL would be www.authorpages.co.uk/yourname and your optional email address would be yourname@authorpages.co.uk. Similarly for illustrators, your URL would be www.illustratorpages.co.uk/yourname and your optional email address would be yourname@illustratorpages.co.uk. If you decide to have your own domain name later, we can forward visitors from your old URL to your new one. (Unfortunately it is not possible to have site statistics with this option. )
Using another hosting provider
There are many other hosting providers offering a wide range of packages
at various prices. When choosing, check out the support available. If
your site goes wrong, it's better to be able to talk to someone rather
than to rely on email support. Telephone support is even better if it's
not provided on a premium helpline.
Using Freespace
If your ISP provides freespace, you may wish to use this. However, there
are some snags to consider.
- Freespace can be slow, especially at busy times of day.
- The URLs for freespace are often difficult to remember.
- Changing your service provider means changing your URL
You can get round the URL problems by registering your own domain name
and pointing it at your freespace. However, if access to the space is
slow, there is nothing you can do about it. As good commercial hosting
is fairly inexpensive, we recommend only using freespace if your budget
is extremely tight.