Now that you've decided to get a website, you may have many new questions: How
does hosting work? How are changes made to the website? How much will the
website cost? Having answers to these questions makes it easier to decide what
kind of website your business really needs:
How does hosting work?
To answer this question, consider this analogy: The Internet is like a
giant magazine. Your website is a print ad within that magazine. The bigger
your ad, the more space it takes up, the more it costs to run it in the
magazine. Similarly, the more pages in your website, the more room it occupies
on the Internet, the more it costs to keep it there. Part of hosting is the
storage space your website requires on the Internet. CragStone's hosting
includes up to 500 MB of hard drive space.
To continue the print ad analogy, the more people who read a magazine, the
greater its circulation, the more it costs to have your ad in the magazine.
Similarly, high levels of traffic to your website are like wide circulation of
a magazine. The other major piece of hosting is the bandwidth allowed for
visitor traffic. If you require high bandwidth, your website will cost more to
host on the Internet. CragStone's hosting includes unlimited bandwidth.
Like print ads in magazines, you need to renew your lease on the space. Some
hosting companies require monthly fees for your Internet space, others require
annual fees. CragStone provides Internet hosting on an annual basis. Without
any hosting, your website will no longer appear on the Internet.
How are changes made to the website?
It depends on the kind of website that you have. Static websites are typically
written in HTML. HTML may be modified with FrontPage, Dreamweaver, or similar
programs that are available to anyone - thereby making it possible for you to
change the content of your website (if you are familiar with HTML and have one
of these programs). Be advised, however, that it is easy to change the website
interface along with the content - so be sure that someone experienced with
HTML makes changes to your site. If you are reluctant to change the website on
your own, CragStone has reasonable rates posted rates for changing content and
pictures in your website.
Dynamic websites are written with a considerable amount of programming that
makes it possible for you to modify the content of your website at any time. By
logging into your website and choosing to edit material that is on pages, your
website is updated instantly. A very convenient means of managing your website,
dynamic websites may be 2-3 (or more) times the cost of a static website. For
this reason, they may become cost prohibitive and should only be considered in
situations where website content needs to be updated on a regular basis - or
when paying someone to update content would cost more that having the dynamic
website programmed.
How much will the website cost?
Again, this depends on the kind of website that you want. The cost of setting
up and hosting a static website (one that requires programming to change) is a
generally a fraction of the cost of setting up and hosting a dynamic website
(one that can be changed instantly while visiting the website). This is because
of the large amount of custom, specialized programming that is required to
create a dynamic site. The cost of the website will depend on its size and how
often it needs to be updated. After set-up, the expense of maintaining a
website depends on the cost of changing it, the hosting fees and domain
renewals.
Static or Dynamic?
Deciding whether you need a static of dynamic site depends on what you need
your site to do. If you are using your website to keep visitors informed of
what you are doing on a regular basis, you may want to consider a dynamic site
(although it costs more initially, there is no expense for maintaining the
frequent changes). If you are using your website to provide mostly unchanging
information to visitors, than a static site may be right for you. Consider the
following static and dynamic website characteristics to help make your
decision.