Buying hosting can be a stressful process, just because there are plenty of options to choose from. But if you’re looking for a new strategy to make it simpler, then you’re in the right place. We’ve had hosting for a long time, for sites of various sizes. As you may realize, the requirements for a larger site in terms of hosting is going to be a little more complex than a site that isn’t getting a lot of traffic. Smaller sites that don’t take up as much room or have advanced features will obviously allow for a smaller hosting package. But let’s dig in, shall we?

See, here’s what you’re really buying with hosting: legacy. If you think about it from this perspective, the search for good hosting is a matter of looking at who can work with you long term. Want to check out more? Just click here, but we’ll still cover a few points to look at when you return.

Legacy is what allows a company to get top dollar in terms of their own valuation. In other words, if investors see that a company is stable, they’re going to pay a lot more for it in the open market compared to a company that feels unstable and uncertain. If there’s one thing investors don’t care for, it would have to be uncertainty. Make sure that if you’re looking at selling your company in the future, that you get good website hosting space that can grow with your changing needs. For example, if you run an e-commerce site, you’re going to need to be able to have SSL certificates, and space to store a lot of data at once. Can you have access to MySQL databases? If you don’t know about databases, you need to find a technical person that can take care of it for you.

The more points of stability you have, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to take care of your company’s goals for a very long time. Building good sense around hosting is a smart way to ensure that even if you don’t sell your company, you’ll be in business for many years to come. Check it out today!

Designers are extremely busy people. Fact. Not only do they have to make time to find inspiration for their next project, manage feedback, attend meetings, and communicate with their clients, they also have to find the time to actually sit down and do the work.

Let’s not forget the time and effort they have to put into mocking up an idea, creating a visual for sharing or keeping abreast of modern design trends. The role of a designer is so much more than just ‘colouring in’.

To ease the workload of time-poor designers, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the best software, apps, tools, skills, websites and resources that no designer can live without. Each of these tools has been carefully selected for its ability to help you streamline your work, find inspiration easily, show off your amazing design skills, and make collaboration easier.

We’ve broken the guide down into the 10 key areas so you can instantly find what you’re looking for — you are busy people after all. Check it out and feel free to let us know if we’ve missed any off the list.

Hardware

If you’re serious about design, there are some essential pieces of kit you will need. We have listed the top 3 pieces of hardware for designers below.

iMac or MacBook

Strictly speaking, now that most design software is available on both PC and Mac, it doesn’t particularly matter which platform you choose. However, the Mac’s pedigree, its powerful and intuitive OS and its built-in support for design peripherals make it the overwhelming favourite for design professionals. Did we mention they also look great in any creative workspace?

Your website is ready to go and now all you need to do is show it to people. But the question is how do you get people to actually see your website? To start with you need a place to put your website online. This is normally referred to as Web space or website hosting. For those of you who are not familiar with the term Web hosting, a host is basically a server (a computer) that is permanently connected to the Internet to “broadcast” websites over the net. Unless you have your own Web server you can click here to get some web space on the server from a specialized web hosting company.

A good company will normally provide hosting services as well as other Web related services for people who do not have their own server. Getting web space from a company is a bit like getting an apartment in a large building. You can basically store any files that you like into the web space and tell people the address of the files by giving them a domain name so they can stop by and have a look.

So what do you need to look out for when you are selecting a web hosting package?

Some of the most important things include; the amount of server space that a web hosting company is going to offer for your website. In addition you need to consider how much bandwidth a company would provide for your website.

Server space refers to the amount of disk space your web hosting company provides to allow you to store your website files. Most web hosting companies provide at least 100 MB of web space and this is normally sufficient for a small website. However, check with your hosting provider and see what they are providing. If it is lower than 100 MB, that may not be enough.

Bandwidth on the other hand is a measure of how much data is transmitted over the Internet. Because bandwidth is rarely unlimited your web hosting company will normally dictate how much traffic you website can receive in a given time period. If your website streams video content or music then your bandwidth usage is likely to be higher due to the larger file sizes used for video and music. In these cases you are likely to need higher bandwidth limits for your website to work properly on your web server. So it’s important to ensure that you have enough bandwidth to cover your website needs. Usually though, the average amount of bandwidth is more than enough.

So how much would you expect to pay for web hosting?

For basic usage you can expect to pay a few dollars a month. However, if you have a larger website that requires more disk space and bandwidth as well as additional features then you can expect to pay more.

So if you’re ready to launch a website then take a look around at the various web hosting packages that are on offer to allow you to successfully host your website. As mentioned above determine whether you will need a basic, intermediate or an advanced web hosting package based on the size and type of your website.