[Wylug-discuss] ADSL migration

[Smylers]

Anne Wilson writes:

> Like most non-professionals, I only half-understand some of the issues
> here, specifically how hosting actually works.

There are lots of options; one type of shared hosting works as follows.
You need to attach your domain to the account, either by transferring
its registration to your hosting provider or by setting the name-servers
(with your existing registrar) to be those specified by your hosting
provider.

That means that all web and mail traffic for your domain will go to your
hosting provider.  They will group many domains on to a physical server
(which generally makes them quite inexpensive; far cheaper than having a
server just for yourself) and provide you with FTP details for uploading
your website and imap and webmail log-ins for getting at your mail.

And that's pretty much it.  I'd expect that's similar to how you're
currently doing things -- the only difference would be that the company
whose hosting servers you're using would happen to be different from
that providing your ADSL.

> I'd love to have my own complete mail server, as distinct from the
> imap server I run internally, but suspect that it would take more time
> and resources than I have to do it right now.  The same applies to web
> serving.

Your suspicion sounds well-founded to me!  I'd stick with using somebody
else's shared hosting (either bundled with your ADSL or from a separate
provider) for the time being, at least until you've got your ADSL move
sorted out and working.

Then if you want to start rolling your own servers later you can do so,
but there's no reason why learning about that should hold up sorting out
your ADSL!

Cheers.

Smylers