Domain Names & Website Hosting

Domain Names

Ajay Solutions are able to offer you a complete website building solution, this includes registering and hosting domain names on our name servers and hosting the website content on our Linux Apache webservers. When you order a website with us and tell us you also want it hosted and require a domain name these things are all free for the first year. We can offer you expert assistance to help you decide on the best domain name for your business.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is the name you see when you go to a website. The domain name of this website is ajaysolutions.co.uk. Other examples of domain names are google.com or drupal.org. Any www address you can think of is a registered domain name belonging to the person or company that registered it. This really is the first place to start when a new website project is undertaken, whilst development can start on development servers, your website can only really go live once your domain name registration is completed.

A domain name can be the name of your business, or it could be a word or phrase that describes what you offer your customers. It is often a good idea to use a name that would be used as a search term to find your business; one that describes what your business does. That way, your website stands a better chance from the outset of enjoying success in the search engines.

What types of domain name can I use?

Whilst the most popular choices in the UK are .co.uk or .com domain names there are actually quite a variety of choices:

• Common UK domain names: .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk
• International doman names: .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .eu
• Specialised domain names: .mobi, .tv, .cc, .uk.com, .uk.net, .eu.com, .gb.com, .gb.net

Sometimes it is a good idea to register more than one domain name, use one for your website and then ‘point’ the others to the site. As an example we use both Ajaysolutions.co.uk and Ajaysolutions.com and both point to this website, and google.com also has google.co.uk or google.de and other localised versions of their domain.

Website Hosting

Your new website (once the website development is finished) needs a place to sit on the internet, this is where website hosting comes in. Once you have your domain name, without it telling people what server your site is listed on, your site won't do very much. So this is another important aspect to consider from the beginning. At Ajay Solutions we offer free shared website hosting for the first year.

The bandwidth required for websites can vary considerably, depending on the number of visitors and the amount and type of content being delivered to the visitors. Reliability of hosting is also a key factor - it is no good having a website hosted if it is always 'down'. This is why we prefer to do the hosting for your website ourselves as we can ensure everything is going to work fine.

What different types of hosting are there

Shared hosting -

Shared hosting is more cost effective, and server resources are shared between various different sites. It is often that this type of hosting is considered adequate for most peoples needs.

Dedicated hosting -

Dedicated hosting is significantly more costly than shared hosting, but offers several advantages. This involves leasing the entire server for your site only. This means you get all the resources and available bandwidth, it also gives far more control over the choice of the server such as a Windows or Linux server, or the specific hardware requirements. If you have a larger site, or a highly popular one, or businesses whose sole purpose is to trade online, then you will probably find a dedicated hosting package is required and offers a better return on your investment than shared hosting.

Another type of hosting which most people are not aware, is that most sites (and all sites offered by Ajay Solutions due to the nature of Content Management Systems) require database hosting. We use MySql database engine and take care of this entire process for you. We will advise on the type of hosting and the specifics related to your website, so you don't have to worry about this. If you have the required infrastructure available, you may choose to host your website yourself, and we will also advise and work with you on this, it is generally however, not recommended.