What Is Hosting?
Just as you need a computer, modem and a web hosting company to connect to the Internet, your web site will also need these things.

A web hosting company provides a server or servers for companies to use to place their web sites. These servers can be setup with a variety of operating systems and capabilities. The hosting company also provides certain bandwidth for your web site to use, which equates to the amount of data that can be transmitted.

Hosting companies provide packages that include bandwidth, storage and capabilities for certain prices. The most basic of packages usually ranges from a five to twenty dollars a month. This type of package usually is for minimal web sites that do not have any need for dynamic content (see static vs. dynamic). In other words, the site is presentation only.

Packages that include dynamic capabilities, including ASP, JSP, Perl, etc. can cost twenty dollars and upwards, some packages starting at hundreds of dollars a month. Most small to medium web sites can purchase packages for twenty to seventy five dollars a month.

We can provide recommendations for the best solution that fits your purposes.

Static vs. Dynamic Sites, What is The Difference?
Static web sites provide presentation and information only. They may included HTML, Flash, Graphic files and other non-dynamic forms of presentation.

Dynamic sites are interactive with the web user. The site can collect information, will change based on user selections and input. For example, sites that contain a shopping cart, search engines and allow the user to customize their views are dynamic sites.

Most companies that want to provide services or products to a consumer or business will require a dynamic web site.

We provide services for both dynamic and static web sites.

Graphics, Flash?
Almost all web sites need some type of graphical presentation. Static graphics are usually created as gif or jpeg files. There are a number of ways to create graphics that provide a dynamic presentation. Animated gifs, flash, etc. While these graphics provide a flashy presentation for your customers there are also drawbacks to using such graphics.

Animated gifs files are large, which can slow down your web site and cost you precious bandwidth. Flash graphics are a good solution, but using flash for your entire web site will cause most search engines to ignore your web site, since they check your web site for text content and do not search flash graphics.

We suggest a balanced web site so that you get the most benefit out of your investment.

JSPs or ASPs?
There are many ways to create web pages. Static web pages usually use HTML. Dynamic web pages have many different implementations.

ASPs were created by MicrosoftTM. ASPs (Active Server Pages) use Visual Basic, a Microsoft language to make the web pages dynamic. The biggest drawback with ASPs is that you must run on a Microsoft server. Most of us know how reliable our PCs perform. In most cases, a Microsoft server is nothing more than a larger faster PC.

JSPs (Java Server Pages) use Java an open source language from Sun to make the web pages dynamic. JSPs are platform independent and can run on Microsoft, Unix, Linux or any other server. Unix and Linux servers are much more stable than any other server operating system.

We suggest JSPs since they are more stable than ASPs, but we can develop in either implementation.

Databases?
Databases store dynamic information. You may want to collect customer information, or present dynamic information in a shopping cart. Databases allow you to search, retrieve, store, update and delete information dynamically. Any database can be used for storing information.

We offer an affordable database that will meet your needs.

Advertising, Engines?
All web sites need advertising of some nature so that people can find your site on the Internet. Users can only find your site though links from either a search engine, banners, or links on other sites, such as directories, or independent web sites. Submission to search engines can be free, but unless you happen to be sorted to the top of the search, your site is unlikely to be recognized. Most search engines also sell advertising called, "pay per click". This advertising usually charges an account based on the number of users that click your link on an advertisement to come to your site.

We believe that it is better to customize your solution to fit your specific needs. We can help you make that determination.