What is a Server?

A server is the name given to a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet for the purpose of displaying websites.

One thing to be aware of is that you need the server to be fast and to have a high speed telecommunications connection (ours has both), so that your website will download quickly and appear on the viewers screen as quickly as possible.

Beware though, often people are tempted to use the 'free webspace' that is offered by your Internet Service Provider. The speed of access to this free webspace will often not be good enough to host a business-grade website. Often at busy times (ie 9am to 10am and 2pm to 7pm) the speed of access to this type of server will almost grind to a halt. If someone is trying to view a site hosted on one of these servers, they may well give up waiting for it to download and move onto another site.

New Forest Online Ltd has its own server that is located in the Cable & Wireless Data Centre. The server is connected at Tier 1 level to a 155mbit/s telecommunication backbone which is monitored 24 hrs, 7 days a week. It has a guaranteed uptime of 99.9% and is backed up daily.