There’s a lot to think about when you’re getting your charity’s web presence off the ground. You’ll want to pick the right domain name, and then you’ll have to consider your site’s design and search engine optimisation.
But before you start building out your site, there’s one essential step you’ll have to take. You’ll need to choose a web hosting service and decide who is going to manage and monitor your server.
This is a side of the internet that most casual users don’t see, so it can seem complex. But actually, web hosting for charities can be easy if you choose the right tools. Read on to learn why web hosting is necessary for your website and how you can make it work as smoothly as possible for you.
What is web hosting?
Let’s talk about the basics of building websites for a moment.
Broadly speaking, a website is composed of data. Some types of data that can be involved in a website are:
- HTML, which is the content of the site – the words on our homepage, the text in your blog posts, and so on.
- CSS, which dictates how the site looks. Do you want your website to have white pages with black text, or the reverse? Should the text be in Arial or Times New Roman? This is what the CSS sets out.
- JavaScript, which makes things happen – such as clicking a button to make other items appear.
- Uploaded files, such as PDFs.
- Images displayed on your webpages.
- And many, many more possibilities.
But all data needs to be saved or stored somewhere. It is possible for organisations to store all this data on their own server. But that can be difficult to manage and could require a lot of storage space, so many organisations pay to store their website data on someone else’s server. In other words, they pay to have their data “hosted” on the web hosting provider’s server. In some situations, other organisations share the server, while in others the organisation gets sole use of the server.
There are many aspects to web hosting, but the most basic one is this – the storage of your data on someone else’s server. And as with storage services of other types, the more data you have to store, the more it costs. After all, the servers storing the data cost money to run.
However, your web hosting service also performs far more sophisticated functions. Crucially, it provides encryption and logins to keep all your data protected. Since modern websites may rely on many applications, it ensures that these apps are kept up to date, so that you get bug fixes and security patches. Basically, it takes care of a lot of complex logistics and maintenance involved in a website so that you can focus on things like updating text or adding new blog posts.
What exactly your web hosting service provides for you depends on which web hosting package you choose. Below, we’ll explore some elements that can be helpful in web hosting for charities.
What’s unique about web hosting for charities?
In many ways, web hosting for charities is like hosting for any other site. You’ll want a way to log in to manage your website in some way. You’ll want your data to be kept safe, too. And it’s especially crucial for every site to be fast and optimised for its users. Website visitors will simply click away if the site takes too long to load, and a slow-loading site also gives an impression of unprofessionalism.
Fortunately, these are all aspects that good web hosting can help with.
One way that charities stand out, however, is that it’s often more crucial for them to keep costs low so they can devote as much of their money as possible to their cause. They may not want to spend their budget on a dedicated IT team, and they may not be able to devote much time to dealing with their website either.
While, of course, charities can range in size from the very large to the very small, many UK charities are SMEs, or small-to-medium enterprises. Their small size can mean that they need to keep things simple and streamlined – again, not requiring dedicated IT staff.
The right web hosting service can help with this, too. Let’s discuss two different approaches to web hosting for charities and how they suit the voluntary sector.
Web hosting for a site you update through a CMS
It is completely possible to create a website from scratch by simply writing code. But that’s extremely hard work and not really necessary, so very few people do it.
It’s far easier to use a CMS, or content management system, to create your website through the framework that already exists in the CMS. This way, you don’t have to write the code to tell your website that you want your text to be blue and in the font Arial. You just click some buttons on the screen, and the CMS changes the appearance of the text for you.
As you can imagine, most charities are likely to use a CMS. This will get them a good-looking result by spending relatively little time.
The most common CMS in use today is WordPress. Wix, Shopify, and Drupal are some others you may have encountered. But if you’re a beginner in website creation, WordPress might be a safe bet. It offers a very wide range of plugins, and since it’s so commonly used, there are plenty of WordPress tutorials around for you to learn from.
So, let’s say you’re creating your site with WordPress. Does that mean your site will be hosted with WordPress, or not?
Actually, it depends. You can choose to have your WordPress site hosted by WordPress. But you can also choose simply to use WordPress’s CMS and have the site hosted by someone else.
The key here is that a charity is typically looking for hosting that will take as much as possible off their hands. For example, LiteSpeed WordPress Hosting through VS Group includes web hosting services together with:
- A plugin that increases site loading speed
- A toolkit that helps you manage WordPress themes and plugins
- Security features such as malware scanning, firewall rules and virus protection for your emails.
These elements can help a charity avoid the need to hire an IT specialist to consistently maintain the site.
However, some charities, especially very small ones, will want the process of owning a website to be even simpler for them. These organisations might want…
Managed hosting
With managed hosting for charities, the organisation gives up both control and responsibility to the hosting service. The managed hosting service has the highest level of control and is “in charge” of making sure the site is running well. In return, the client takes care of the content of the site, such as the text, but doesn’t worry about the technical side of the site.
This can be a great solution for small charities that don’t have the expertise to maintain a site on their own. It’s a smart decision when you consider how crucial web security is and how disastrous a breach can be. Even a glitch in the site can cause lots of problems that an organisation without an IT team can struggle to fix. Managed hosting is a safer bet in this scenario because it entrusts the care of the site to professionals.
VS Group’s managed hosting service includes these components and more. It offers:
- Ongoing monitoring and security scans
- Problem fixes
- Measures to keep your site online even in the event of a server issue
- Fast loading speed
- A firewall
- Data backups.
Choose secure, easy web hosting with VS Group
At VS Group, we’re specialists in telecoms solutions for charities. With ten years of experience in IT for the voluntary sector, we bring a wealth of experience to the table.
But that’s not all. VS Group takes our relationships with charities seriously. Each month, we donate to a different charity from those we work with. In fact, just this year we won a social responsibility award in Lancashire.
So, if you’re a charity looking for web hosting support from a provider who knows what you need, get in touch with VS Group to learn about our packages offering web hosting for charities. We provide tailored solutions to each of our clients, ensuring that we always meet your unique needs.
You can reach out to our expert support staff at 0330 094 0170 or email us at customerservice@vsgcomms.com.
