Every website needs a home, otherwise known as a host.  Choosing where your website is going to "live" is an important decision.

Why not go with one of the "big" hosting companies?

You certainly could go with one of the "big" hosting companies, such as HostGator, HostMonster, GoDaddy, 1 and 1, FatCow, or one of countless other host companies - large or small, local or global. "Unlimited" space, bandwidth, and email accounts sound attractive, and for many people or organizations this is their preferred way to go.

Quite simply, though, Black Hills Web Works has no interest in competing with host companies that offer "unlimited" quantities. So what do we have that's different? In essence, we put your website on the Web, and we make sure it stays there with managed hosting.

Managed Hosting

A website doesn't "just appear" on a web host's server, and it doesn't "just stay there" without some time and effort. What we offer our clients is peace of mind, knowing that their website has been deployed correctly, that critical software updates are performed on a timely basis as needed, and that regular, dependable backups of their website and its data are being performed and maintained. We call this managed hosting, and this is what the "big" hosting companies don't offer.

Managed hosting involves two key areas, and those are critical software updates and regular backups.

• Critical Software Updates

Software updates for a website? Yes. The age of static websites is quickly fading away. Many of today's dynamic websites are powered by a Content Management System that uses a combination of software such as Joomla! and a constantly changing database.

As the internet changes, evolves and progresses, the websites that "are" the internet must be updated to keep up with the changing technology. Websites that are not updated on a timely basis are at risk of being hacked, defaced, or destroyed. Timely software updates are a critical step in keeping a website secure and on the web, doing what it is supposed to do.

Keeping track of and installing critical software updates to your website's CMS and third-party extensions is one essential part of managed hosting. The other is regular backups.

• Regular Backups

Hey, bad things happen, and they're usually out of anyone's control. Hackers, power surges, or acts of God. If you haven't been making regular backups of your website and it's data, you may be faced with rebuilding your site from scratch if something goes wrong. Keeping a current backup of your website could mean the difference between having your site back online within minutes or a few hours at most, for little or no cost to you, or taking days or weeks and paying someone to rebuild your website.

Not only do we make and keep regular, dependable backups of your website, we keep backups of the backups in an off-site location. Paranoid? When it comes to your data, yes.

It's like having a website administrator - without the overhead

You could do this yourself, or pay an employee to do it, but do you want to? In this fast-paced, rapidly-changing technological world we live in, some things are better off handled by someone dedicated to the task, and we think managing your website hosting is one of those areas. Hiring Black Hills Web Works to manage your website hosting is like hiring a full-time website administrator, without the overhead.

Tell me about your servers

Black Hills Web Works has contracted with Rochen Performance Hosting to provide a superior website hosting solution. Rochen has earned a reputation for providing "business class, reliable, high performance hosting solutions." What they don't do, however, is deploy your website or manage the ongoing process of maintaining the technical details of hosting your website on their servers, and that's where we come in.

Can I manage my own hosting on your servers?

Sorry, but no. If you really want that level of hands-on control of your website hosting we recommend signing up directly with Rochen Performance Hosting. We are the only ones with access to your website's cPanel, directories, files and database, and for security and performance reasons, we like to keep it that way.

Black Hills Web Works didn't build my website, but will you host it?

Managed hosting is an integral part of a complete website solution, and we offer this service primarily to the clients for whom we build websites. However, we are open to discussion in some areas, so let us know your situation by using the Contact Us form, and we'll get back to you with an answer.

Does managed hosting include content or design changes to the website?

It doesn't. At least, these changes are not included in the cost of managed hosting. These kinds of changes are typically handled and invoiced separately on an hourly basis.

In addition to the backups mentioned earlier, we do keep a "current" version of your website running on our personal server, allowing us to easily make changes or upgrades to your website without affecting the "live" website until the changes are complete and ready for the world to see.

Sounds great, but what does it cost?

Click here to see our pricing for managed hosting.