Your website starts life as just a collection of computer files. How do we make sure your message reaches your target audience? All websites are stored on a 'host' computer - it is this computer which your website visitor will connect to, in order to view your website files. No matter where your visitor is in the world, they will always be connecting to the same host computer to read your site.

We're sometimes asked "Can I host my own website?" Well, the host computer must be one which is permanently connected to the internet, which means that ordinary computers that use a modem and a telephone line are not suitable. It also has to be a computer which never changes its IP address, which means most types of ADSL aren't suitable.

What can go wrong with a hosting arrangement ?

The hosting computer must be powered on with the network connection working at all times - you never know when someone will want to view your website. Any "down time" on your website may interrupt someone's intention to enquire about your company, or order a product or service from you. At Room101, we believe that nothing short of 100% uptime is an acceptable target.

The hosting computer might be too far away from the site visitors computer. Most of our clients are UK based, and we therefore make sure that their websites are located at the optimum location for this - so that everyone in the UK can call up your site with minimum waiting time..

The hosting computer must be a modern fast computer, with an excellent network connection. If your website isn't busy today, it will be tomorrow. If your promotion efforts succeed, you'll be driving many people to visit your website. It is important that your hosting computer doesn't grind to a halt when 5 or 10 people are using it at the same time. Also, each of these 10 people has probably got a 56k modem connection - to service them all at once, your hosting computer needs to be connected to the internet at least 10 times faster! Think of it like a large city with only one motorway which goes there. People will be coming to the city from many different locations, and they probably all start their journey down a small country lane or residential street. But by the time they reach the city, they're all travelling together - do you need a 6 lane motorway? Or would 8 lanes be better? Fortunately, it's easier to avoid traffic jams on the internet, you simply need to use a hosting computer with a wide enough connection to cope with anything.

In the 20th Century, the currency of the world was based on the gold standard, with enormous amounts of gold kept in extremely secure facilities such as Fort Knox, guarded against any possible form of attack. Here in the 21st Century, the new currency is information. What makes the share price of a multi-national rise and fall? The value of shares is easily boosted or damaged by the latest news and information. Clearly, it's information which is the new currency, and datacentres are the new Fort Knox's, set up to protect all kinds of information against being stolen, delayed, defaced, revealed to the wrong people, or rendered inaccessible at a crucial moment.

In today's highly evolved internet industry, there are many large ISPs. (Internet Service Providers). The typical British ISP will have a bank of web servers, connected to the internet through a broad internet circuit, and located in a data centre. A commercial ISP will obviously be looking to maximise the return on their very expensive datacentre real-estate, and this unfortunately comes down to cramming as many website hosting clients onto one server as possible. Think of it as the battery chickens environment for websites. 1000+ websites per hosting computer is not unusual, the problem is that your web site will simply not perform at its best in such an environment.

Additionally, if your website has a particular special need, it invariably cannot be accommodated, as the ISP will be worried about upsetting things for one of their other myriad of clients, most of whom they have little or no contact with, except for issuing invoices.