Affordable Website Hosting

In both interpretations of the phrase 'local website hosting' you probably should consider it, yes, but let's just clarify what the 2 interpretations of local may refer to.

Local Website Storage

When we refer to local website hosting, we do not mean that your website will be hosted from a server sat in our Banbury office, running the risk of someone pulling the plug by accident. We use Digital Ocean data centres, from around the world, to best suit you.

The World Wide Web is global and therefore so is your website, but it means 'local' in a global sense could be continent or country, and what you should be doing is looking for a local solution, based on your target audience.

If your audience is UK based then a data centre in London is local. If you have a European market then you may wish to consider a more central European location, such as Frankfurt or Amsterdam.

We can offer this flexibility, just let us know where your core audience is based.

Local Website Management

If you're interpreting local to mean using a local website company to manage the hosting for you, then we absolutely agree you should look local. Not only does it give you a friendly face but you know you won't be expected to sit in a queue for support questions and will actually have a name to contact.

Shared hosting means your account will be hosted on a server with other Ampersand Studio clients. Essentially you will be sharing the servers resources. A dedicated hosting package means you will be the sole user of that server and can use the servers resources to best suit your needs.

An account refers to a single URL or domain name and any sub domains you create. For shared hosting this means each domain requires it's own hosting account, or you can contact us for a bespoke arrangement. A dedicated hosting package comes with 5 accounts and can be upgraded, if required.

Our shared hosting server is based in a London data centre. A dedicated hosting server can be located at any data centre across the world, including San Francisco, Singapore and various locations in Europe.

Yes, for our shared hosting environment we do. You will be provided with our 3 nameservers that mean you can control your DNS records through our control panel.

This service can be included for Dedicated hosting if requested.

No, we are not a domain registrar. We recommend using the largest domain registrar GoDaddy, to purchase your domain name.

The simple answer is ask a professional website hosts to do it for you! Is it possible to host a website from your home? Yes. Is it advisable to host your website from a home server? No.

There are a number of components required to host a website and a number of factors to think about. The following provides a checklist of things to consider:

• Domain Name
• DNS Configuration
• Server Operating System
• Server Location
• Server Security
• Expected Traffic Levels

The domain name is like a postal address. It tells the internet where you're looking to get to and the DNS configuration is like the sat nav, giving the internet the route to take to find the website. You can't host a website without a domain name and you will need to have access to DNS settings in order to point the domain to the hosting server.

In theory the server could be sat in your bedroom but this isn't recommended as it's likely your broadband won't be stable enough or secure enough to host a website for unknown external visitors.

When deciding where to have your server located, consider where your main audience will be. If you're a UK company, anticipating only UK customers then look at a data centre from within the UK, such as London. The server location can have a small impact on the speed of your website so expecting a UK visitor to end up on a server in Asia, is adding to the speed of the sites loading time.

Local website hosting doesn't mean hosting from home, local in this sense means local country or even continent, depending on your audience.

If you have an international audience then you may need to consider hosting on multiple server locations, but this goes beyond the extent of this question.

So you have a domain, you have a server location, the last major consideration is what operating system the server needs to be and what configuration the sever needs to be.

If your site is developed using ASP then you will have to have a Windows server, otherwise it's likely to be PHP, in which case we'd recommend a linux website hosting package. If you have an online shop or believe you will have high levels of traffic then you will likely need to increase the memory and CPU numbers for the server, potentially even needing a dedicated server, purely for your site, rather than a shared hosting environment.

As you can see there are a number of considerations when it comes to hosting a website and we'd recommend getting in touch with us to make the right choices. Ultimately it's worth knowing that you're not tied to a single hosting solution for life. Hosting can grow with your website and you can upgrade and downgrade servers as you need or even point your domain to a new location, if the need arises.

This is one of those 'depends' questions! It depends on the following items, amongst others:

• Shared or Private?
• High CPU or Low CPU?
• Low Traffic or High Traffic?
• Emails & Website or Website only?

If you're a business looking to host an information website then you really probably only need a shared hosting environment and our Linux website hosting package will be a perfect match for you, from as little as £70 a year. We offer local website hosting that's affordable, secure and fast.

If you're expecting heavy traffic loads, need additional security measures or have functionality that requires particular CPU processing power then you're probably want to look at a VPS or Virtual Private Server. Costs will vary, depending on specific configurations but plan for it to start from about £60 a month.

Contact us for a quote for your hosting requirements.

Yes, in theory. The very first website I created I hosted from home but this is not an advisable route to take!

You are relying on your home internet connection and power supply. Any power cuts will render your website inaccessible, unless you also provide a generator backup and any downtime in your internet connection will also make the website run slow.

Security is also an issue. Unless you know how to set up a firewall and router you could be leaving your home internet connection open to abuse.

So yes you could provide your own local web hosting software but the affordable hosting options are a much more efficient use of you resources!