Knowledge base
Hosting & infrastructure
Where your website lives and how it stays up. Hosting types, domains, DNS, certificates, email delivery, backups, and monitoring, explained without the jargon.
64 articles
Articles in Hosting & infrastructure
Accounts and access: the hosting checklist when someone leaves your company
The access checklist to run the day a colleague, freelancer or agency stops working with you, from domains to the services behind the site.
4 min read
Choosing a CMS in 2026: the questions that matter
The ten questions that decide which content management approach fits a business, and the answers that point to files, a headless CMS or a platform.
4 min read
Databases for business websites: when you need one and when you do not
Whether a business website needs a database at all, why the ones that do need a managed one, and how to tell which you are.
4 min read
DDoS protection for small businesses: what you need and what is marketing
What a denial-of-service attack does to a small site, which protections actually matter, and why a static site behind a network layer already has most of them.
4 min read
Edge computing for business websites: what it changes and what it does not
What running code at the network edge means for an ordinary business website, where it helps, and where it is marketing.
3 min read
Fonts: self-hosted or from Google, and why it matters for privacy
Why we serve web fonts from your own domain instead of loading them from a third party, and what that changes for privacy and speed.
3 min read
Headless CMS: what it is and who it is for
What a headless content management system does differently, when a business benefits from one, and when content as files in the repository is the better choice.
3 min read
Hosting glossary: 40 terms in one sentence each
The forty hosting and infrastructure terms a business owner meets in quotes, invoices and incident reports, each explained in one plain sentence.
6 min read
How much does downtime cost a small business? A way to estimate it
A practical way to estimate what an hour of website downtime costs your business, so decisions about hosting, monitoring and response are made with a number.
4 min read
Infrastructure as code: why we write the setup down
What it means to define hosting, DNS and configuration in files rather than clicking through dashboards, and why that protects the business that owns them.
3 min read
Managed WordPress hosting versus a static site: total cost of ownership
What each costs over three years once hosting, maintenance, security, speed and the people time are counted, and where each makes sense.
4 min read
Moving from shared hosting to a modern platform: the migration plan
How to move a website off a traditional shared hosting account onto a modern platform without losing email, rankings or a weekend, in seven steps.
4 min read
Multiple websites, one team: how to keep hosting under control
How a business that runs several websites keeps domains, hosting, access and maintenance from sprawling across providers and people.
3 min read
Our take: most small businesses overpay for hosting and underpay for monitoring
Why the hosting line on a small business invoice buys unused capacity while knowing when the site is broken goes unfunded.
3 min read
Rate limiting: how we stop one visitor from taking your site down
What rate limiting is, where we apply it on a business website, how the limits are chosen, and what a visitor sees when they hit one.
3 min read
Redirects during a migration: how to keep your Google rankings
How to map every old address to a new one when a website moves, so rankings, backlinks and bookmarks survive the change.
4 min read
Scaling for a launch or campaign: what to prepare
How to get a business website ready for a product launch, a media moment or a campaign, so the traffic you paid for does not break the thing it lands on.
4 min read
Status pages: should a small business have one?
What a status page does, when a small business benefits from one, what it must not depend on, and the lighter alternatives that often suffice.
3 min read
Subdomains, subfolders and separate domains: how to organise a growing site
When a section belongs in a folder, when it belongs on a subdomain, and when it deserves its own domain, with the SEO and maintenance consequences of each.
3 min read
Third-party scripts: every tag is a dependency
Why every analytics tag, chat widget and pixel on a website is code you run but do not control, and how we decide which ones a site carries.
4 min read
Traffic spikes from press or TV: why static sites survive them
What happens to a website when a television mention or a news story sends thousands of visitors at once, and why the architecture decides the outcome.
3 min read
Two-factor authentication on hosting and domain accounts
Why the accounts that control your domain, DNS and hosting need a second factor more than any other, which kind to use, and how to avoid locking yourself out.
3 min read
Video on your website: host it yourself or embed?
The three ways to put video on a business website, what each costs in speed, privacy and money, and which we use for what.
3 min read
Webhooks explained with a form submission
What a webhook is, followed step by step through what happens when a visitor submits a form, and why webhooks are how systems tell each other things.
4 min read
What an API is, and why your website talks to other systems
A plain explanation of application programming interfaces, with the examples a business website actually uses and the questions to ask about each.
4 min read
What to check before you cancel your old hosting
The checklist we run before an old hosting account is cancelled, so nothing that still depends on it disappears with it.
4 min read
Why "FTP into the server" is a warning sign in 2026
What it means when a supplier updates your website by copying files onto a server, why that method causes outages and breaches, and what replaced it.
4 min read
Backups: what should be backed up, how often, and where
A backup is only worth what it can restore. What to include, how often each part needs it, where copies should live, and the one test that proves it works.
3 min read
Bandwidth, requests and edge functions: what you actually pay for
Modern hosting bills by what the site consumes, not by the server. The four units on the bill, what drives each, and how a small site keeps them all near zero.
3 min read
Cache invalidation: why your change is not showing up yet
You published, refreshed, and the old page is still there. Which cache is holding it, how to clear each one, and how a good setup makes the problem disappear.
3 min read
Caching explained: why the second visit is faster
Caching keeps a copy closer to the visitor so the next request skips the trip to the source. The three layers, what TTL means, and why changes seem to lag.
4 min read
Cloudflare in front of your site: what it does, step by step
A network layer sits between every visitor and your site. What it does to each request, why most junk never reaches you, and what it does not replace.
3 min read
Contact forms on a static site: how they work without a server
A static site has no server, yet its form delivers. The small function behind it, the spam protection around it, and where the message goes.
3 min read
Deploying a website: what happens between "publish" and "live"
You approve a change and minutes later it is live. The six steps in between, and how they keep visitors from ever seeing a half-finished site.
3 min read
Disaster recovery for a small business website: a one-page plan
If the platform or the domain were gone tomorrow, how would the site come back? One page: what is backed up where, who restores it, how fast.
4 min read
Domain registrars: what to look for and what to avoid
The registrar holds the most important asset your website has. What to require, the practices that signal trouble, and how to move a domain to a better one.
3 min read
Email hosting versus web hosting: keep them apart
Website and email are different services with different failure modes. Why bundling them on one account is a risk, and how to separate them.
3 min read
Environment variables and secrets: where keys should live
API keys, tokens and passwords are what connect your site to other services. Where they belong, where they must never be, and how to check in five minutes.
3 min read
Git for non-developers: why your website should live in version control
Version control records every change to your website with who, when and why, and lets any of it be undone. What owning the repository means.
3 min read
Hosting costs for a business website: what drives the price
Hosting bills range from almost nothing to a serious monthly line for similar sites. The six factors behind the gap, and which ones you control.
3 min read
Hosting in the EU: what it solves and what it does not
EU hosting is sold as a compliance box to tick. It simplifies some things, changes nothing about others, and is sometimes not what you get.
3 min read
How to move your domain without breaking email or the website
Most domain and DNS moves break email, not the website. The five-step order that keeps both working, the record everyone forgets, and how to verify properly.
3 min read
How to test a backup, because an untested backup is a wish
A backup proves itself only when it restores. The quarterly test: what to restore, where, how to check it, how long it took, and what to write down.
3 min read
Image hosting and optimisation: why images belong on a CDN
Images are most of a page's weight and most of the bandwidth bill. How they should be sized, formatted, delivered and cached, and why on a CDN.
3 min read
Logs: what they are and why they matter when something breaks
Every request, error and deploy leaves a line somewhere. What the different logs record, how long to keep them, and why an incident without logs is a guess.
3 min read
Monitoring: how we know your site is down before you do
Monitoring is the difference between an outage and an incident. What we watch on every site, who gets alerted, and why a status page is not monitoring.
3 min read
Preview deployments: how we show you changes before they go live
Every change gets its own live link before it touches the real site. What a preview deployment is, how approval works, and why it beats screenshots.
3 min read
Regions and data residency: does it matter where your site is hosted?
For public pages the server's location barely matters. For the data behind them it can matter a great deal. How to tell which case you are in.
3 min read
Rollbacks: how to undo a bad deploy in one minute
A broken change should cost a minute, not an evening. What a rollback is, why it needs every deployment kept, and how it changes the way changes get made.
3 min read
Shared hosting, VPS, cloud, edge: what the words mean for your business
Shared hosting, VPS, cloud, serverless, edge: five words that describe who runs what. What each means for speed, cost and responsibility, in plain terms.
3 min read
SSL certificates in 2026: free, automatic, and still misconfigured
Certificates are free and renew themselves on modern hosting, yet expired ones still take sites down. What a certificate does, and the four setups that fail.
3 min read
Staging environments: why changes should never go straight to live
A change should be seen working somewhere safe before visitors see it. What local, preview, staging and production each do, and when staging is worth having.
3 min read
Static websites: when a business site does not need a server at all
A static website is built once and served as finished files: faster, cheaper to run, harder to hack. What it is, what it cannot do, and how forms still work.
3 min read
Uptime: what 99.9 percent really means in minutes per month
Uptime percentages hide the number that matters. What each figure means in minutes of downtime, what a guarantee actually promises, and what to ask for instead.
3 min read
What a build pipeline is and why it protects you
A build pipeline turns a change into a checked, deployable site automatically. What runs inside it, what it refuses, and why it beats talent.
3 min read
What a CDN is and why your visitors in another country care
A content delivery network serves your site from a location near each visitor. Why that matters for speed, uptime and attacks, and when you already have one.
3 min read
What DNS is, in plain terms, and why it breaks websites
DNS turns your domain into the address of your website and email. Six records do most of the work, and one wrong record takes a business offline.
3 min read
What happens when a domain expires, and how to prevent it
An expired domain takes site and email offline, and can be lost for good. The phases after expiry, why it happens to careful businesses, and four safeguards.
3 min read
What serverless means and why it is cheaper for spiky traffic
Serverless runs your code only when something calls it and bills per use. What changes for cost, scaling and maintenance, and where a server is still right.
3 min read
Where does a website actually live? Hosting explained without the jargon
Domain, DNS, hosting, CDN, origin: five words that decide whether your site is fast and stays up. What each one does, in plain language, with a diagram.
3 min read
Who holds the accounts behind your website, and how to move any of them
Five layers sit behind a website. Which ones we manage and why, what our terms guarantee about getting any of them back, and what to ask any supplier.
5 min read
Why we host business websites on Vercel and Cloudflare, and when we do not
Our default hosting is a static build on Vercel behind Cloudflare. Why those two, what it costs you nothing to leave, and the cases where we choose differently.
3 min read
Why we do not run email on the same server as your website
Old hosting packages put mailboxes next to the website. We never do, and we move clients off it. The four reasons and the setup we use instead.
3 min read
Why your hosting bill is confusing, and how to read it
Hosting invoices mix infrastructure, services, add-ons and support into lines nobody explains. The six kinds of line and which to question.
3 min read