At this moment, the world has over 4.5 billion people using the internet. Regardless of what your business might be dealing with, ignoring such a fact is a sin. After all, being present on the internet is the cheapest and simplest way to make sure your products and services are visible to potential buyers. It should also be a number one thing on your mind if you want to be competitive on the market, otherwise, the competition will swallow you whole.
We’ve come to a point where owning a website doesn’t require much investment as well, so even the smallest business cannot find an excuse for not owning one. This is to remind all of those who haven’t done so, to make themselves visible online, since the right time is now. Your potential clients are there, all the time – when at work while traveling, while on a vacation, or at home. The fact that more than half of the population is reachable on the global platform, allows you to have access to a much bigger market. Such a platform, or rather an opportunity should not be ignored, in the 21st century.
When you step into the process of creating a website without a proper professional supporting you, things can get quite confusing though. This is an issue for those small businesses, which do not have adequate IT support, yet. You’re aware you need a domain name, and you already have an idea, now all you need is a company via you can buy it and secure it’s yours. What can happen, is that they answer your needs and provide you with a domain, but then you find out you also need hosting.
There are several ways to find out whether you already have one or not or to find out who is your DNS and Hosting provider. Here are some tips:
- The first one and the simplest is to check whether the company that provided you with the domain name has also provided hosting. Most companies sell the whole package, however, if you weren’t paying attention to the details, maybe you ended being sold only the domain. So, either call them and check or consult the receipt they gave you for their services.
- The second option when you are not sure who is your hosting or DNS provider, for whichever reason, is to use online tools for searching. No need to mention, there are countless online search engines for things like this. Let’s explain further – you are sure you have your domain name already claimed, now what you want to find out is where your files are hosted.
For this, all you need to do is use one of the search engines google suggests, search based on your domain name and when the results appear, read the info under the “Name server” section. Based on this, you’ll know the location where the files are hosted.
The usual answer to why you need this information is for the future changes you plan to make on the DNS server. And, the final thing you need to do to learn about your web hosting is to DNS search engine. When performing this, make sure you’re going through the A-records. Another thing the search will result in is an IP address. Copy it, and go to the IP search engine – paste to find out where it originates. The results will uncover which organization is your provider, therefore, the next logical thing to do is to go to their website, log in, and check/compare all your data.
What’s the difference between the domain and the hosting?
It’s only fair to go back one step and describe the difference between the domain and the hosting. Just to have a better understanding of their importance. For those who are outside of the IT world, we’ll use the common language.
The term “domain” is related to a name or a title. Let’s say, a car or a book has to have a title. So does the web, although the name itself is not the website. For illustration, we’ll use a TV show example. You have the title, but you still lack the script – you claimed a domain, but you need content for the web. This can be developed later. In this story, hosting would be a production house. Choosing servers (Web hosting) that will host your website is like choosing a production house for your TV show. That’s why hosting and domain do not necessarily need to be bought from the same company. Here’s when DNS servers appear in the story. When the hosting is complete, the same company sends them to you, when the website is being activated. You’re officially “on the Air”.
Maintaining sure your website is functional with failover
Failover performs constant health checks to make sure the website stays functional. It’s not a surprise that a web can crash in a matter of minutes, due to a number of issues related to the network, or something else. Therefore, owners want to ensure that regardless of what happens, the information stays available online. After all, it’s what keeps the users faithful to the product or service the business provides.
Now you must be asking yourself how can you make sure you have this maintenance tool? It’s ok to be confused, if so, far DNS and hosting were confusing you too. A failover service can be obtained on https://constellix.com/products/dns-failover.
To have a clearer understanding of what it does, here’s a short explanation. So, your site can have multiple IP addresses available for traffic. This service is in charge of directing it. If it assesses that one or more addresses are not functional at the moment, it will move the traffic towards a functional location. Therefore, in case of an issue, you’re safe by using the backup.
Services such as this are extremely valuable because when one calculates how much revenue they can save just by making sure information stays accessible online, they’ll never want to risk not having it.
