About cookies on this site
We use cookies to collect website performance and usage data, and to enhance and customise content and advertisements.
About cookies on this site
Cookies used on the site are categorized and below you can read about each category and allow or deny some or all of them. When categories than have been previously allowed are disabled, all cookies assigned to that category will be removed from your browser. Additionally you can see a list of cookies assigned to each category and detailed information in the cookie declaration.
Necessary cookies
Some cookies are required to provide core functionality. The website won't function properly without these cookies and they are enabled by default and cannot be disabled.
CookieHub is a Consent Management Platform (CMP) which allows users to control storage and processing of personal information.
Cloudflare is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.
Preferences
Preference cookies enables the web site to remember information to customize how the web site looks or behaves for each user. This may include storing selected currency, region, language or color theme.
Analytical cookies
Analytical cookies help us improve our website by collecting and reporting information on its usage.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Clarity is a user behavior analytics tool that helps you understand how users interact with your website.
Vimeo, Inc. is an American video hosting, sharing, services provider, and broadcaster. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices.
Marketing cookies
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites to allow publishers to display relevant and engaging advertisements. By enabling marketing cookies, you grant permission for personalized advertising across various platforms.
The LinkedIn Insight tag powers conversion tracking, website audiences, and website demographics within the LinkedIn system.
A piece of code that lets businesses measure, optimise and build audiences for advertising campaigns.
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is a service that provides pay per click advertising on the Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo search engines.
Cookies used on the site are categorized and below you can read about each category and allow or deny some or all of them. When categories than have been previously allowed are disabled, all cookies assigned to that category will be removed from your browser. Additionally you can see a list of cookies assigned to each category and detailed information in the cookie declaration.
Necessary cookies
Some cookies are required to provide core functionality. The website won't function properly without these cookies and they are enabled by default and cannot be disabled.
Name | Hostname | Vendor | Expiry |
---|---|---|---|
cookiehub | .bigfork.co.uk | CookieHub | 365 days |
Used by CookieHub to store information about whether visitors have given or declined the use of cookie categories used on the site. | |||
PHPSESSID | www.bigfork.co.uk | Session | |
Cookie generated by applications based on the PHP language. This is a general purpose identifier used to maintain user session variables. It is normally a random generated number, how it is used can be specific to the site, but a good example is maintaining a logged-in status for a user between pages. | |||
__cf_bm | .vimeo.com | Cloudflare, Inc. | 1 hour |
The __cf_bm cookie supports Cloudflare Bot Management by managing incoming traffic that matches criteria associated with bots. The cookie does not collect any personal data, and any information collected is subject to one-way encryption. | |||
_cfuvid | .vimeo.com | Session | |
Used by Cloudflare WAF to distinguish individual users who share the same IP address and apply rate limits |
Preferences
Preference cookies enables the web site to remember information to customize how the web site looks or behaves for each user. This may include storing selected currency, region, language or color theme.
Name | Hostname | Vendor | Expiry |
---|---|---|---|
lidc | .linkedin.com | LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company | 1 day |
Used by LinkedIn for routing. | |||
li_gc | .linkedin.com | LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company | 180 days |
Used by LinkedIn to store consent of guests regarding the use of cookies for non-essential purposes | |||
vuid | .vimeo.com | 400 days | |
These cookies are used by the Vimeo video player on websites. |
Analytical cookies
Analytical cookies help us improve our website by collecting and reporting information on its usage.
Name | Hostname | Vendor | Expiry |
---|---|---|---|
_ga_ | .bigfork.co.uk | 400 days | |
Contains a unique identifier used by Google Analytics 4 to determine that two distinct hits belong to the same user across browsing sessions. | |||
_ga | .bigfork.co.uk | 400 days | |
Contains a unique identifier used by Google Analytics to determine that two distinct hits belong to the same user across browsing sessions. | |||
bcookie | .linkedin.com | LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company | 365 days |
This is a Microsoft MSN 1st party cookie for sharing the content of the website via social media. | |||
CLID | www.clarity.ms | Microsoft | 365 days |
Identifies the first-time Clarity saw this user on any site using Clarity. | |||
_clck | .bigfork.co.uk | Microsoft | 365 days |
Persists the Clarity User ID and preferences, unique to that site, on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. | |||
MUID | .bing.com | Microsoft | 390 days |
Microsoft User Identifier tracking cookie used by Bing Ads. It can be set by embedded microsoft scripts. Widely believed to sync across many different Microsoft domains, allowing user tracking. | |||
MR | .c.bing.com | Microsoft | 7 days |
Used by Microsoft Clarity to indicate whether to refresh MUID. | |||
SM | .c.clarity.ms | Microsoft | Session |
This cookie is installed by Clarity. The cookie is used to store non-personally identifiable information. The cookie is used in synchronizing the MUID (Microsoft unique user ID) across Microsoft domains. | |||
MUID | .clarity.ms | Microsoft | 390 days |
Microsoft User Identifier tracking cookie used by Bing Ads. It can be set by embedded microsoft scripts. Widely believed to sync across many different Microsoft domains, allowing user tracking. | |||
MR | .c.clarity.ms | Microsoft | 7 days |
Used by Microsoft Clarity to indicate whether to refresh MUID. | |||
_clsk | .bigfork.co.uk | Microsoft | 1 day |
Connects multiple page views by a user into a single Clarity session recording. |
Marketing cookies
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites to allow publishers to display relevant and engaging advertisements. By enabling marketing cookies, you grant permission for personalized advertising across various platforms.
Name | Hostname | Vendor | Expiry |
---|---|---|---|
_fbp | .bigfork.co.uk | Meta Platforms | 90 days |
Facebook Pixel advertising first-party cookie. Used by Facebook to track visits across websites to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers. | |||
SRM_B | .c.bing.com | Microsoft | 390 days |
This cookie is installed by Microsoft Bing. Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. | |||
ANONCHK | .c.clarity.ms | Microsoft | 1 hour |
Used to store session ID for a users session to ensure that clicks from adverts on the Bing search engine are verified for reporting purposes and for personalisation | |||
AnalyticsSyncHistory | .linkedin.com | LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company | 30 days |
Used by LinkedIn to store information about the time a sync with the lms_analytics cookie took place for users in the Designated Countries | |||
UserMatchHistory | .linkedin.com | LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company | 30 days |
Contains a unique identifier used by LinkedIn to determine that two distinct hits belong to the same user across browsing sessions. | |||
bscookie | .www.linkedin.com | LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company | 365 days |
Used by the social networking service, LinkedIn, for tracking the use of embedded services. |
Colin Richardson
Digital Design Director
14/06/2022
There are a load of different web hosting options out there, how do you know which to choose? And what even is web hosting?
Read on and discover more about the world of servers, clouds and DNS.
If you were going to make a website, where would you put it? In a bungalow? A shack in the woods? You'd probably want your website to live on the internet, and that's exactly what hosting does.
Web hosting is a service, not software. It's like renting an office versus buying one. And you wouldn’t just pick an office in any building, you’d want to find space in an area where you’d like to work, within your budget, and with the facilities you need such as fast broadband, utilities, and on-site security.
When you're looking to host your B2B website, there are many different options. The type of hosting you choose will depend on the type of site you have, how much traffic it gets and how much storage space is needed. There are four main types:
This is the most basic form of web hosting where multiple websites sit on one physical computer and share its resources. The main benefit of shared hosting is cost as it’s by far the cheapest solution, and a good choice for small sites that don't generate much traffic or require a large amount of disk space.
Virtual Private Server hosting (VPS) is like shared hosting in that multiple websites share one set of resources. However, resources are allocated to each website, so if one website gets busy, it doesn’t affect other websites on the same computer. A VPS is a good upgrade from shared hosting if you find your website is slow, however you may find that cloud hosting is a better step up (and a lot of “VPS” offerings are actually cloud hosting these days).
Much like VPS hosting, cloud hosting gives each website its own resources. However, it’s not just tied to one physical machine, instead the resources are spread across multiple computers aka The Cloud. The benefit of this is resources are no longer constrained by one server and your hosting power can be scaled up (or down) if your requirements change. Cloud hosting is easily available and a very popular choice for PHP hosting.
With this type of web hosting, you own (or lease) an entire physical computer exclusively for your use. This means you don't have to compete with other sites in terms of resource usage such as storage space or processing power and have complete control over the specification of your server. A dedicated server can easily run multiple large websites so can be a good option if you do have a lot of sites to manage, however the power and flexibility of cloud hosting means that you'll often choose cloud over dedicated.
There are two main things you need to host your website:
Your domain name is how people will find your website. For example, this websites domain name is bigfork.co.uk. A domain name tells the internet where your website lives, much like your office address tells people where your business is located.
You can often register your domain name through a hosting provider, but you don’t have to. A domain name can be pointed to any provider if you know how.
You’ve probably noticed most websites start with www, but the “www” isn’t actually part of the domain name, it’s called a “subdomain”. If you’d like to understand more about domain names, see this domain name guide by Moz.
A hosting provider offers the actual hosting service. This might be shared hosting, cloud hosting, or another type of hosting as mentioned above.
Hosting providers often offer additional services too. Which might include domain registration and email accounts as part of a wider package, that also covers technical support, spam filtering, firewall protection etc. Depending on your needs you may want a complete package, or you may separate out the different services for example:
Hosting plans determine things like the type of hosting, how much memory (RAM) your website can use (more is better, the same as your computer or phone), and how much processing power it will have access to (again, more is better).
Plans can sometimes be hard to understand though, for example 1GB of memory on shared hosting is not as good as 1GB of memory on cloud hosting. If you find there are big price differences between similar sounding plans, this could be why.
If you're curious about where your website is hosted, you can use a WHOIS tool to check the registration information for your domain name. This will tell you which company the domain name is registered with, but this isn’t necessarily where your website is hosted. To find this, you need the NS (Name Server) records for your domain name, which the WHOIS tool will also show, and will be a website URL a bit like ns2.csc-hostit.com. There are usually at least two name servers for your website.
You can also find the NS records by looking up the DNS (Domain Name System) records for your website. These contain information about how domains are connected to specific servers and how they work together. DNS Watch is a good tool for discovering more about your DNS records.
Once you have found your NS records using either of the above methods, a Google search is the best way of finding which company owns the name server domains, and where your website probably lives.
It’s only a “probably” because it is possible your website is hosted somewhere else, but that starts to get too complicated for this article.
When choosing a host, it is important to consider your budget as well as the type of hosting you choose. Before you start searching for hosts, think about what kind of hosting packages work best for your needs and budget.
The more specific you can be about these factors, the easier it will be to identify suitable hosting for your website, and therefore understanding how much it should cost.
The actual cost is impossible to know without understanding your requirements, you can get basic shared hosting from £30 a year, or you might need a fully managed heavy-duty cloud solution that can run into thousands of pounds a month.
Yes, you can host your website for free. The downside is that free website hosting often has limited features and won’t offer the same level of reliability as paid hosting plans do. If you want the best possible experience for your site, we recommend sticking with a paid plan instead of going free.
It depends on what you need. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is arguably one of the most flexible and powerful web hosting services on the market, but it’s not designed for mere mortals to understand, so isn’t much use if you just want to self-host a basic website.
There are many providers who offer cheap shared hosting and have flashy TV ads that might be better suited to your needs. But you may find their performance to be a bit sluggish and the support not very supportive.
And if you Google “best website hosting” you’ll find a million articles on the matter, nearly all of which include affiliate links to generate revenue. So, all they really tell you is which web hosts pay the best referral fees.
Ultimately, the best web hosting is really based on your requirements and ability, some good things to consider are:
Just because websites are virtual doesn’t mean they don’t have a real effect on the environment. Web servers run on electricity and have a carbon footprint, but there are many hosting providers who provide sustainable hosting.
This means that they’re dedicated to making sure that their servers are green, which means they use clean energy and recycle as much as possible. It might also include carbon offsetting to further reduce their environmental impact.
If you’re interested in green web hosting, here’s a good blog post by Wholegrain Digital – how to choose a green web host.
If you already have website hosting, you might want to move to a different provider at some point. Perhaps to get a better deal, or maybe you want better performance or support.
Transferring your web hosting very much depends on your technical know-how, and the web hosts you want to transfer from and to. Many web hosts offer website migration as a free service to encourage customers to switch to them, so that’s always worth checking if you do want to move host.
If you’re confident with managing and deploying websites, then moving host is a straightforward process. The main thing is to make sure you safeguard against data-loss, so a good method is:
Bear in mind this only works if you have a self-hosted website. If you’re using a SAAS or PAAS (Software / Platform as a service) product such as Wix or Shopify, then you can’t migrate your hosting as it’s tied to their service.
If you just want to host a personal website, or something that isn’t mission critical, then most shared hosting providers will be fine.
If you’re looking to host a website for your business, where factors such as security and reliability are important, we recommend speaking to a B2B web development agency.
Chances are you’ve had an web agency create your website so they’ll have a good understanding of your requirements and can make recommendations.
You should expect to pay an agency a lot more than going direct, as they’ll be including costs to set up the hosting, deploy the website, and manage the hosting on your behalf. However, your business website is an investment that is best looked after by professionals.
If you need any help with hosting, or have questions, feel free to ask us anything.
This article was updated on , filed under website development, digital products.
Get the latest B2B website news straight to your inbox
We can make your new website a great success.