website hosting and maintenance
Website Hosting
Hosting a website means that Pico design will store the website, the email addresses and data on a professional web server which will provide a fast and reliable connection to the Internet and mail server facilities to enable the email accounts to be used with software such as Outlook and Thunderbird to receive email. Pico Design Hosting also includes renewal of the domain name or names.
If you are UK based, then your website will be stored on a professional web server in the UK.
Domain names
A domain name is the website address. This will be purchased on your behalf and renewed every one/two years. You don't own a domain name, it is more like renting.
Web Servers
Hosting a website on a professional web server in a Data Centre is good because they are fast! and very reliable. Data centres are designed for speed, reliability and redunancy. If a connection to the internet is lost, there will be others. If power fails there is an immediate backup. Web servers are designed so that if hardware failure occurs, then repairs can be made quickly and while all systems are still running. Web servers also allow search engine bots to crawl your web pages and list your website on search engines. This can happen multiple times a day, which is another good reason for having a fast web server capable of receiving a lot of internet traffic.
Email Addresses
Up to 10 email addresses that come with the website can be set up and hosted, and the data transfer that applies when emails are sent and received. Anti-Virus and Anti-spam can be installed on any of the email addresses for no extra cost. Pico Design will supply instructions and settings in order to collect your email using programs such Outlook or Thunderbird.
Important: With Pico Design, you get your own mail server, and not just an email forwarding service. This means that you have a proper email address that is the same as your website such as you@yourdomain.com, rather than having email address forwarding. Email address forwarding means that you wouldn't actually get any email addresses that match your website name, you would get one like this: you@yourdomain.freeprovider.com. By relying on a free email address for your business the chances of email failure are much higher - and it is much more professional to have an email address that is the same as your website.
All these facilities also have to be administered and that is included in the price of Hosting as well as everything mentioned above.
Website Maintenance
Website maintenance is a service that will ensure websites are kept up to date regarding current web standards and the latest browsers that are released.
Latest Browsers
In order to make sure the website will work in the latest browsers, each website must be checked and changes may need to be made to the code of the website to make it work properly in the new browser. Web browsers have their differences and so do new versions of the same browser. Some browsers present websites better than others and some do not adhere to web standards as much as others. When Internet Explorer 8 came out, it displayed some web pages very differently to the way Internet Explorer 7 displayed them, and website maintenance is provided so that your website will always be displayed as it should in the main browsers.
Web standards
Similarly, when changes are introduced to web standards such as a new standard of markup, or changes to accessibility requirements, then the website will be altered to accomodate these changes, ensuring it is still programmed to the latest standards, and is still legal in terms of it's accessibility.
If you should need to set up your email again, or would like the password reset then this can be done and comes under the maintenance banner.
A website is live and not a hard copy, and needs to be constantly maintained to ensure that customers are presented with a working website. A lot of the work involved in done behind the scenes so it is not often noticable to the website user or client.