Where’s your Internet business going to live?
For someone to find your web site, it has to sit on a computer somewhere and be open for business 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.
There's a whole range of reasons why your web site should not reside on your PC, but it has to be housed somewhere, and that's where 'hosting' companies come in.
Your web site sits alongside thousands of other web sites on the hosting company's servers (computers). As you would expect, no hosting company gives you space on their servers for free, but hosting is not a huge expense, it can in fact cost as little as £25 a year.
From your potential customer's point of view, It doesn't matter where your site is which is why there are outfits all over the world offering hosting services although my preference is to use UK companies.
When things go wrong, and it's down to hosting problems, the chances are that you'll want to speak to someone over the phone and in normal working hours.
Getting your business in front of your customers
So your site’s been built and it’s sitting on a server somewhere waiting patiently for its first visitors.
Of course you’ll be able to find/visit your site because you know the exact address you need to type in on your PC’s keyboard to do that. And so will anyone else you give the address to. But what about the rest of the world? All those people who don’t know that your site exists and will not be able to find it because they’ll have absolutely no idea of its address!
Fear not, help is at hand in the form of the search engines…