Frequently Asked Questions - Web Hosting

We do offer our design clients a premium hosting package that costs just $100/year and features unlimited bandwidth, storage space, email addresses, statistics and all the scripts and libraries necessary to run your website.

Our hosting service is only available to our design clients. This ensures that we never have any pornographic, spam, illegal or otherwise malevolent websites on the same server as your website. It also ensures that every site on the server is built using strict protocols. Furthermore, the server is configured to give our clients far more memory and access to server resources than is typically available in a shared hosting environment. Essentially, you receive all the benefits of a Virtual Private Server at a fraction of the cost.

Most clients though choose to host with us simply for the convenience of having a single point of contact for all website related questions or concerns. It is 100% optional though. You may host your site with any provider so long as they meet our performance and technical requirements.

If you're ready to set up an account, you can go to http://www.stadiastudio.com/products/website-hosting to get it started.

If you have not yet purchased a domain name, we recommend GoDaddy as they are inexpensive and it is very easy to manage multiple domains. You can go to http://x.co/Xh6U to get started, or visit http://www.stadiastudio.com/domain-search for additional information.

Stadia Studio does not require our clients to use us for hosting, it's simply an option. We do, however, have certain technical and performance requirements that must be met in order for the site that we're building for you to run and run well.

For instance, every site we build requires at least one available MySQL database.

If you would like to use an alternate hosting provider, we simply ask that you give us an opportunity to review their available plans before you purchase your hosting so that we can ensure complete compatibility. We'll also ensure that you do not overpay for hosting.

Typically, new websites are developed on Stadia Studio's development server. Once a client has approved their site and it is ready to Go Live, this is the process that is followed:

1. A complete copy of the site is downloaded and archived in the Stadia Studio offices. Archived copies of sites are usually retained for about 6 months.
2. The database is exported as a SQL data file.
3. A new database is created on the Live hosting account and the SQL data is imported.
4. All files and folders are uploaded to the new hosting account via FTP.
5. The database connection file is updated to use the new database name and location.
6. The website is audited for any changes that need to be made to accomodate the new hosting location. This generally includes updating images and links contained within page content.

This process usually takes just 20 - 30 minutes. If a hosting vendor other than Stadia Studio is used, additional time will likely be necessary. Stadia Studio's hosting server has already been configured and optimized for Drupal CMS implementations. Other hosting vendors may need to increase account resources, install additional scripts and libraries, or other adjustments. Extensive issues with third-party hosting vendors are not included in standard project scope. Because of the potential for complications, and the confusion that multiple vendors can cause clients, we always recommend that our design clients use our hosting service. Please read more about our service and always discuss your hosting options with us before ordering service. Some hosting vendors are simply not supported.

Any time a website needs to be moved to a new hosting company, once it's been uploaded to the new account, the domain name needs to be updated. The nameservers must be updated to use the new hosting server's nameservers.

Nameservers, at a basic level, store domain names and provide the corresponding IP Address for the actual site's hosted files. So, when you attempt to visit a website like StadiaStudio.com, your browser instantly looks at the domain name registration for StadiaStudio.com and contacts the registrar. The registrar provides nameservers of NS1.STADIASTUDIO.COM and NS2.STADIASTUDIO.COM. Your browser then connects with those nameservers and receives the physical location for the website's files and folders.

In order to save time and deliver websites faster, individual Internet Service Providers (ISP) store domain name information and skip the first couple steps of the above process. Since sites move around all the time, ISPs regularly update their domain name information, or cache, though the frequency of updates will vary from ISP to ISP.

So, when a domain name's nameservers are changed, the change process goes through two steps. First, the domain name registar must update it's records for your domain, which may take as long as 2 hours. Then, individual ISPs will gradually update their domain name information, which could take as long as 72 hours depending on the ISP.

When a site is moved and a domain name is changed, individual users will need to wait until their ISP updates their domain name information before they will be able to see the new site or the site at the new location. It's also possible for users to go back and forth for a short period between seeing the old location and the new location, as cache gets updated at the ISP level as well as the local network level. Most users though will see the new location within a couple of hours without issue.

Now that your new website is up and running, you'll want to make sure that you have a good backup and recovery plan in place.

First, your website hosting vendor should provide regular nightly backups. Check to make sure that they do. You should also verify what is being backed up - your website consists of files and folders, as well as one or more databases and your email accounts.

(Websites hosted by Stadia Studio are completely backed up nightly.)

Second, you should regularly (once a month) log into your hosting control panel and initiate a full backup that you'll save to your local computer. This is so you have a complete copy of your website, that isn't too old, in the event something should happen with your hosting vendor or your hosting account.

If your site is relatively static, there is no need for you to maintain multiple archived versions. However, if your site is regularly changing, it would be beneficial to save your backup files each month and keep older month's archived. If a change is made that is later found to have caused an issue come kind, it may be possible to revert your website to a version from before the change was implemented.

High-traffic ecommerce or corporate sites may want to invest in additional automated backup and archival services which we are happy to discuss and provde as needed.

With these processes in place, you will be able to restore your website quickly if needed.

Definitely not. Our hosting server is a dedicated server located in a state-of-the-art data center in Michigan. The data center is maintained by one of the highest quality server companies in the country, LiquidWeb. Our server is monitored constantly by LiquidWeb's monitoring systems and staff. Their technicians are on call, ready to be of assistance at a moment's notice.

We currently have one dedicated server that is wholly controlled by Stadia Studio on lease from LiquidWeb. Additional servers will be added as capacity and performance requires, and we review our current configuration regularly.

If you'd like to know more about our data center, please watch this video: