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Pre-Sales Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some frequently asked questions about our hosting packages. If your
question is not answered here, please contact
our Hosting Manager who will be pleased to assist you further.
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Why is it so cheap ?
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Q
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Why are your prices so cheap ? - what's the catch ?
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A
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We are buying hosting storage and bandwidth for a number of accounts
and sharing with you the economic benefits of bulk-buying.
Our suppliers see us as just one customer to support, and therefore can
afford to reduce their markup on the storage and bandwidth we all consume.
Since we are a non-profit making organization, we do not expect to turn round
a huge profit from our clients; we only need to cover the costs of our own
hosting. Also we do not have any overheads, since all of our staff are
volunteers.
There isn't really a catch. Your site will still be hosted on the same
server that it would have been, if you had purchased it directly from
our supplier.
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Can't I use my ISP's Free Webspace ?
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Q
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I already have free webspace with my ISP. Why should I need to
buy webhosting from you ?
How is it any different ?
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A
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Your free webspace is fine if you only need to deliver static pages from the
web server. Our hosting packages allow you to use additional features such
as server-side scripting, CGI, perl, php, databases, etc which are not
normally available with the webspace most ISPs give their customers.
Your ISP webspace will be a virtual domain within your ISP's vanity domain.
If you want to use your own domain name with your ISP webspace, then this can
be done via web forwarding, but this is problematic. (See the answer on web forwarding)
Our professional hosting also provides many additional features, such as
individual POP3 Mailboxes, mailing lists, auto mail-forwarding, filtering,
FTP accounts and many more that aren't normally available with ISP accounts.
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Can you host my domain name ?
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Q
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I have a domain name - can you host that for me ?
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A
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Yes - we will serve your domain name on our domain name servers. The domain
name does not need to be transferred to us - you retain control of it. Nor
do we charge for transferring the domain, since you will retain control of
it.
We will also serve various sub-domains and CNames within your domain.
When your account is created with domain "your.domain.name", the
following sub-domains will automatically be created too
- www.your.doman.name
- mail.your.domain.name
- ftp.your.domain.name
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What if I don't have a domain name yet
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I don't have a domain name yet - can you register one for me ?
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A
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If you wish, we can register your domain name(s) and administer it/them on
your behalf. We will charge an additional annual fee for this service.
Most of our customers prefer to register and administer their own domain
names. There are many companies providing this service for reasonable fees.
We recommend 123Reg who offer reasonable prices and a good level of service.
By clicking through this link you will also be helping to raise funds for the Black
Dam Sea Scout Group.
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What about Web Forwarding ?
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Q
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Why shouldn't I use web-forwarding from my domain name register ?
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A
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Most domain name registrant companies provide a web forwarding service so
that web requests for your domain can be forwarded to any website. You
could use this to host your web site in a free virtual domain. However, there
are problems and side-effects with using web forwarding.
Frames Forwarding
If you want your visitors to believe they are actually on the website that
has an address that matches your domain, then this must be done using a
frames redirector. This means that each and every page of your site will
appear on your visitor's browser inside a frameset document. Should your
visitors wish to bookmark any pages on your site, they will only be able to
bookmark the top frameset document, and not individual pages within your
site. It is for this reason that frames-based web sites are often frowned
upon by visitors.
You often get very little or no control over the frameset code that your
redirected site is sitting inside, which can result in undesired effects.
The other problem with frames, is that great care must be exercised to
prevent the "framset within a frame" problem, and another reason
why web developers avoid them.
Non-Frames Forwarding
Web redirection without using frames is achieved by redirecting the visitor
to the actual page or directory that the site is hosted on. As soon as this
is done, your visitor sees the virtual domain in the address bar instead of
the URL including your real domain name. This method does not suffer any of
the other problems that frames redirection gives, and it also works with
older non-frames browsers.
Our professional hosting packages avoid all of these problems by serving
your site from a web server that actually serves your domain name.
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