StatCounter Insights

Free Insights & Training in SEO, Web & Social Media

Domain Name Registration

As you begin to develop your website, select a web hosting service, and prepare to make it live online, you’ll first need to decide on a domain name and register it. A domain name identifies the IP address of your server, but more importantly, it’s used as the URL for your website. With this, your domain name/URL should include your business name and, if possible, give an idea of what your business is or does.

Here at StatCounter, we not only provide our valued members with detailed analytics for their websites, we also provide essential information necessary in acquiring traffic to your website and keeping users engaged on your site. Then, you can use newfound knowledge from our Insights pages in combination with analytics to improve your site for search engine rankings. Having said that, you’ll first need to select and register your domain name as you get your site up and running.

Suggested Reading

If a dedicated server won’t suit your website and business, you can learn more about web hosting and the different types by viewing the articles below:

What is a Dedicated Server?

Much like it sounds, a dedicated server, also known as dedicated hosting, is a web hosting service which provides each customer with their own server. For clarification purposes, a server is essentially a program which utilizes Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to serve web pages to internet users. In shared or VPS hosting, a single server is shared between multiple users, who can then have multiple domains. The storage space and RAM on a shared server must be split between users, which can affect each user and their domain.

In contrast, a dedicated server allows you to be more in command of your website. In fact, the flexibility of dedicated servers actually calls for a fairly strong understanding of such technology, though the ability to customize is worthwhile. In other words, a dedicated server allows you to tailor it to your website’s specific needs. For businesses whose sites typically receive a large amount of monthly traffic (100K+ visitors monthly), dedicated hosting is quite beneficial.

A dedicated server provides dedicated resources to businesses that need a cloud solution that is directly catered to their needs. A business can customize their dedicated server to host software, websites, databases, or perform any computing processes they require. The entire server is used by a single business and access to the server is not shared. You see, shared hosting often comes with many limitations, which can be quite debilitating for a business’s website. As mentioned, the main drawback to shared hosting is that resources can be strained, especially when businesses are subject to over-subscribing.

Essential Definition

Over-subscribing: A server hosting more users than it is capable of holding. When all the users show up to access their site, some users are blocked from accessing their data.

Benefits of Dedicated Hosting

From the ability to customize to the lack of congestion from other users, dedicated hosting presents numerous advantages to those businesses that require a dedicated server. For further help in determining whether dedicated hosting is right for your business’s website, check out the benefits and features of a dedicated server below:

Security

One of the main benefits of dedicated hosting is the increased security in comparison to VPS and shared hosting. Since you have your own server, you don’t run the risk of sharing with a spammy website. On a shared environment, any user can upload a corrupted file and compromise the security of the data on the server. On the other hand, a dedicated server is like a lockbox within a bank vault. Many companies may share the vault to store their data, but their data is separated into servers reserved for their business.

Many cloud hosting services include backups that can ensure the security of lost data. Data can be recovered from a backup and save businesses from the time and effort of recreating their data. Plus, the security offered by dedicated hosting is a requirement for e-commerce sites or any website that accepts credit card payment. A dedicated server environment mitigates a lot of the security threats that businesses can face online.

Control

As mentioned, resources are split between users within shared hosting, which can be limiting. With a dedicated server, you have complete control over the resources, which avoids the hassle limited bandwidth and a slow server can present. A dedicated server gives businesses the freedom to scale their solution by adding users, storage, RAM, CPU, bandwidth and any feature that will allow them to perform at the highest level. Businesses with a dedicated server can choose every aspect of their server.

Better Performance

Also a result of having your own server and not sharing space with others, the performance of your site will be far more optimal. You won’t have to deal with server downtime nearly as often. As mentioned, over-subscribing is a common problem for businesses on a shared cloud. To further explain oversubscribing, a great example is the way airlines book flights. They often sell more tickets than available seats expecting people to miss their flights. When everybody shows up, somebody gets booted. A server that is maxed out with users can experience this same issue and leave companies unable to access their data. Of course, this isn’t an issue with dedicated servers.

Scalability

With shared servers, you’ll need to migrate to a larger server or host should you ever require more space. A dedicated server, however, allows you to add more space while remaining on the same server, simplifying the process and avoiding the hassle of migrating a website. The process is also immediate. Dedicated servers have incredible resources and any change you make to your server can be made in an instant. If a business orders more RAM to improve the speed of their server, they can count on that change being implemented right as it’s ordered.

Unique IP Address

With your own IP address, you won’t need to worry about the behavior of other websites, such as malicious ones. In contrast, you could feel the repercussions of such a user on a shared server.

Essential Definition

As you can see, a dedicated server is essential for high-volume businesses. As your business and website expand, your server will have to as well. And a dedicated server is perfect for such. In short, a dedicated server gives you the ability to have total control over your website. This will ultimately affect (and benefit) the user experience on your site, which can have a strong impact on your site’s traffic and performance.

Monitor Your Site with StatCounter

Regardless of the type of web hosting you choose, you’ll want to keep a close watch on your website’s traffic to ensure it’s performing well. With StatCounter’s free web tracker, you can do just that. We provide members with valuable and detailed metrics so you can better understand your website’s traffic and use that knowledge to continually improve your website. However, in order to boost traffic and cater to web users, you should also consider search engine optimization (SEO). You can find plenty of info in our SEO Insights.

As the trusted domain and web hosting provider of StatCounter, 1&1 offers an array of web hosting solutions and services to help you launch your site seamlessly. Better yet, most of their hosting plans come with a free domain and many additional features to help improve your site. Learn more below:

If you have any questions or need assistance in using our tools, you can contact StatCounter member support by completing the form below.

Share this article

Understand your visitors with Statcounter

See why over 1,500,000 bloggers, web designers, marketing and SEO professionals and small business owners around the world use Statcounter to grow their business.

Learn More