What it is
Hosting is the server where your website physically lives. A domain is its address on the internet (for example, devunit-lab.ru), registered separately and renewed every year.
How we use it
We help choose both for the task at hand and move websites between hosts with no downtime and no lost search rankings.
Where it matters to a business
- The site works, but it is unclear what you pay the hosting provider for and what is actually used.
- The domain is registered to a former contractor or employee, and getting it back is hard.
- The site needs to move to another provider without losing search rankings or going down.
How we use it
- A hosting audit. For a museum complex we checked the hosting and domain separately: what is paid for and what actually works.
- A dedicated server for websites. The studio's and clients' sites live on a separate server, not on the VPN machines, so editing a site can no longer take down the VPN.
- One main domain. «Дыхание Поволжья» runs on a Cyrillic domain, and the Latin-letter and typo domains lead to it with a permanent redirect.
- The domain belongs to the client. The domain and the server are registered to the client, not to the contractor.
We move sites between hosting providers without downtime under Infrastructure.
Common problems
- Paying for extras. Services added "just in case" years ago keep being charged.
- Provider restrictions. Our hosting provider blocks outgoing mail ports: receiving mail works, sending does not. Better to find that out before buying.
- The domain is not yours. When the contractor changes, the site is left without an address.
- Everything with one provider. The websites server is with the same provider as the VPN nodes, so a provider problem will hit everything at once.
When you do not need it
You do not have to deal with hosting yourself: what matters is that the domain is in your name and the access credentials are with you. The rest can be handed to a maintenance plan.