Brilliant Thinking

Contents

The infrastructure is the glue that links all the systems together – it includes the pointers to make sure your domain name points to the web hosting, the set-up of your internal systems used to access email and any other links that may be needed between the website and your back-office systems.

Website Infrastructure

Aside from the hosting itself (covered in another post), the website infrastructure consists of:

• The domain registrar
• The hosting company (can be the same as the registrar)
• The server and network configuration
• Email service provision
• Data backup

The domain registrar is the first link in the chain and care should be taken to select a good registrar who offer a fully featured control panel that allows you full control over your domain name(s) so that you can fully manage the DNS, lock and unlock domains, update details, and transfer domains in and out. There are still a number of registrars today who don’t offer these features and some of these registrars can be very slow in responding to emails or faxes to update information about your domain. The end result of using a less capable registrar can mean delays in launching or updating your website. It took over a month for me to transfer a domain from a well known UK registrar recently because they only responded to email support requests and took 2 weeks to do so, usually with a question which required more email correspondence and another 2 weeks “in the queue”. Furthermore, some ISPs won’t even talk to the web developers because they are not officially a contact for the domains and so every communication has to go via the client.

Even if it costs slightly more (and we’re only talking a pound or two), choose a registrar with a fully featured control panel. We recommend 1&1.

For most businesses starting out, you will probably take up a virtual hosting account with your registrar. This will either be a Windows or a Linux server, and this will influence the type of programming you can do on it. If you have appointed a web design company (like ourselves) prior to setting up your hosting, ask them what they need before picking a package. We have had to change platforms from Windows to Linux and add additional services in the past - this takes time, introduces delays and can add cost.

We run our own Linux servers in a London data centre, so we usually point the domains registered with the registrar to our name servers so that we can fully manage the hosting and email on behalf of our clients. This is why the DNS management is important in the registrar’s control panel as there are no delays in updating the settings and getting the site running. Even though you may use your registrar’s hosting facilities initially, you may want to change this in the future. DNS management is also essential if you want to do something called “delegated subdomains”. What this means is that you can host www.mydomain.com on one server and clients.mydomain.com on another. Without DNS control this may not be possible as some ISPs won’t allow you to do it.

When you have full control over the DNS (either at the registrar or through your own name servers) you can also manage the provision of email services. Most ISPs offer POP3/IMAP by default, but with DNS control this can easily be replaced with your own internal Microsoft Exchange server or a any other third party email system. Having this level of control also allows for the introduction of spam and virus checking on the email service.

Data backup is also recommended just in case something goes wrong; for example hardware (disk drives) can sometimes fail and the system needs to be restored. Virtual hosting companies may not offer this as an option (see related hosting post).

Client Infrastructure

This is the IT set-up required to access and use your website.

Some larger businesses host their own website on their own internal website servers. Such businesses often have their own internal IT teams to set up and manage such servers, or outsource this function to an IT support company.

A client’s internal infrastructure includes the set-up and management of firewalls to provide security on their network, as well as the deployment of email software to the desktop or via a server (e.g. Microsoft Exchange). The email system either downloads the emails periodically from the POP3/IMAP accounts on the web server, or act as a full server where the email is delivered to directly. Often, virus and spam protection software is installed in the client’s infrastructure.

The other component of client infrastructure is the provision of business logic (programs) that access information on the website itself. These can be simple import routines which enable downloaded information to be imported into internal systems and software (for example financial data imported into Sage), through to more complex systems which fully integrate the website systems with the internal back-office systems ensuring a seamless transfer of data both ways between the business and the website. On our Internet Maturity Model, this is Level 4. Such business logic does not include content management systems which are considered part of the “site engine“.

Now that everything has been tied together, we can look at marketing the website.