Web Development & Hosting

Elements of Modern Website Design You Must Know

Website design has completely changed over the past five years. You can tell almost immediately when you visit a site that has a design older than a year. Here are a few elements you must keep in mind while designing a website according to Rack Alley:

Color Scheme
Use colors that suit the niche of your website. Don’t use too many colors. Excessive use of colors can ruin the theme of the website. Colors must be compelling to your site, to visitors and to your business as well. Use light colors for the website to make it look appealing. Websites of companies like Apple, Amazon have only two primary colors on their website.

Ample Spacing – White Space
White space in this context means the space between elements of the website. In simple terms – empty space is a must on a site for it to look professional and organized. One can use white or any other light color. But spacing is a must.

Relevant Calls-to-Action
Motive of every site should be to have a CTA for its reader. It can be spreading awareness to take an action on the issue or making them buy something. The main thing to remember is that the call to action needs to be relevant to the context of the website and the page.

Today user experience is best for improving your ranking, reducing your bounce rate and even inspiring your reader to take an action. There are many other things, like hosting your website at an LA data center that you must keep in mind, but, if you consider only these few elements for building a modern you will have a good foundation from which to start.

Five key factors to consider when choosing a data center provider

The demands on organization IT infrastructure are growing every day. One of the better financial and technical decisions is to move those operations to a data center. The key factors when making a decision are the location, facilities, security, and uptime. Let’s look at each of those in a little more detail:

Location

The importance of location will depend largely on the organization. If the data center is the primary or secondary site and requires physical access, then it is a good idea to choose one that is local, like an LA data center. Other considerations include the stability of the geographic area, and the data centers access to stable power.

Facilities

Data centers have the infrastructure that you would expect such as power, network connectivity, and redundancy for all those systems. However, there are some that also offer other facilities like workstation areas, conference rooms, secure loading docks, and access to other equipment you would need in the event of a disaster.

Security

When it comes to security, no data center can do too much to protect the equipment and information of its clients. There should be physical barriers and protection for the facility, with layered security zones restricting access and monitoring systems.

Uptime

The final and key factor to look out for is guaranteed uptime. There needs to be sufficient redundancy on all systems and regulatory compliance to ensure that they meet the advertised uptime. For example Rack Alley has connectivity 300+ networks, on-net carriers & ISP’s and Intercontinental cable landing points.

The top drivers for colocation adoption

Written by Rack Alley

It is hard to predict what percentage of companies will go cloud or server hosting Los Angeles over the next few years. As it stands, according to recent surveys, around seventy percent of IT operations still run the vast majority of their workloads in-house. At least half of senior IT executives expect the majority of their workloads to move offsite, even those like LA web hosting. The majority of those moving off-site will be looking to collocate rather than move to the cloud. Here are some of the reasons that these organizations opt for colocation:

Divesting owned infrastructure

Sometimes an executive directive to cut costs by divesting of an owned data center is the primary reason for colocation. While dismantling a data center has cost benefits, existing server infrastructure will hold value for years, making colocation an obvious choice.

Not core business

IT and data center maintenance is not a part of the core business for the majority of companies. The best move for them is to rely on experts to manage the underlying infrastructure and retain staff for administration and policy decisions.

Staff resources

Another reason is that most organizations lack the staff resources to run an owned data center. Also, there is a lot of churn with IT staff at that level, leading to potential gaps in service and standards. Annual audits usually reveal these inadequacies.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their Los Angeles data center.

The advantages and disadvantages of dedicated server hosting

Written by Rack Alley

In the hosting world, there are several packages and types of hosting. Starting with the basic la web hosting packages all the way to a dedicated server. There are times when a site owner will want to upgrade from a hosting package. The choice at that point is to move to a higher capacity hosting package or a dedicated server. Often, users will opt for the dedicated server option for the performance that option affords. This upgrade to a dedicated server comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Here they are:

Advantages

A dedicated server affords complete control of the server and its operating system. With server hosting Los Angeles any software package can be installed. In addition, any obscure changes that niche software will require to the configuration will also be possible. Another advantage is that since there is only one user on the server, there is no sharing of resources. All server resources can be geared towards the running applications.

Disadvantages

Unless the amount of resources used in the previous package is similar, the jump in cost will be significant. A dedicates server package is basically the rental of a physical server and the host’s services. This can be quite expensive. The other issue is that with this level of control, maintenance, and other functions will also be required. This includes software updates, bug fixing and attending to resource management.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their Los Angeles data center.

The difference between cloud computing and datacenter colocation

Written by Rack Alley

At a basic level cloud computing and colocation are the same thing. They both involve running applications on servers that reside in data centers connected to the internet. These facilities are built with a focus to redundancy, security, cooling and power at a cost that is economical to the client. There are some factors that differentiate the two.

The first is in the provisioning of resources. Datacenter colocation looks at the leasing of resources to physical servers. While some colocation providers also supply servers, most expect the customer to bring their equipment to the datacenter. Cloud computing providers on the hand provide access to virtual resources. These can be processor power, disk space and even applications like LA web hosting. These are paid by the hour of usage of each resource.

The other is that of transition costs. While cloud computing allows you to provision the services immediately, colocation allows the use of existing servers. Since most organizations won’t be setting up fresh, this is a legitimate concern. A lot of money has gone into existing servers and colocation will be cheaper for the same services.

In addition, not everyone will need the massive levels scalability and redundancy provided by cloud computing. For most organizations, server hosting Los Angeles will be a more cost effective option compared to moving everything to cloud computing providers.

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Rack Alley is a provider of colocation services at their Los Angeles data center.

How Hosting Can Affect SEO

One of the most common pieces of advice given by a Los Angeles Internet marketing company to their clients is to carefully choose the web hosting company they use for their business website. This is because going with the wrong host can cause various issues, such as a website that is slow to load or is inaccessible at times. All these problems can make business owners lose money as potential customers go visit a competing website instead. Another reason as to why so many recommend that you carefully research your choice of hosting provider is that your hosting can have an impact on your SEO.

Offering a good user experience is essential if you want to receive good rankings from Google. Websites that are slow to load due to poor design or hosting problems routinely get penalized. So do sites that are frequently inaccessible due to server downtime. Even the best Los Angeles Internet marketing experts can’t help make your site rise through search results if Google penalizes it for these reasons.

As SEO is challenging enough without dealing with web host issues, you should ensure that the company you’re using to host your website offers a solid uptime guarantee and fast speeds. If your website has complex features, such as discussion forums, or is visited by hundreds of people each day, you may want to go with a VPS or dedicated server solution for maximum performance. That way, the Los Angeles marketing agency you use has a better chance of increasing your site’s visibility on Google and other search engines.

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If you’re looking for a reliable Los Angeles search engine optimization company, Sticky Web Media has been voted one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing firms.

A primer of shared hosting packages

Written by Rack Alley

Choosing a web hosting package for the first time user can be a difficult prospect. There are so many different packages to choose from. The differences between them might not be so obvious. The most popular package you will find on almost any web host is the shared hosting package. They come in many names but are usually the cheapest or one step up from the cheapest. Here is a primer on what to expect from a shared hosting package:

Shared

This reason that these packages are so cheap is because they share a single web server across multiple accounts. In some cases this could mean that a shared account could have thousands of other users on the same server. There are few problems that can stem from that. Firstly, anything that another webmaster on the same la web hosting does can affect your uptime. If a site is suddenly hit with a spike of traffic, it can slow all the other sites on the same server. The same goes for punishments.

Unlimited

These packages also trumpet how they allow unlimited amounts of everything. Unlimited bandwidth, disk space etc. None of this is true. For most customers there are enough resources provided that they would never notice. However, were your site to suddenly become a breakout hit or get a massive amount of traffic, you are likely to be shut down citing some condition. They will then recommend a dedicated server.

Other limitations

There are also some other limitations. The easiest example is security. Now that Google gives additional ranking boosts to sites that use SSL, every site is now looking to get SSL setup. Unfortunately most shared hosts will not be able to give you a dedicated IP that SSL requires. You will need to get proper server hosting los angeles in order to get that dedicated IP.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their los angeles data center.

Have You Considered Colocation?

By Rack Alley

Does your company have a website? Of course it does! Every company should have one. The problem is that too many people don’t fully think about their company’s needs as far as a website goes. As a result, they take the cookie-cutter approach to picking the way their site will look and how it works. Put another way, they just go with what everyone else has.

What’s worse is that they often do the same thing when it comes to choosing a Los Angeles data center for hosting purposes. They simply pick one that comes well recommended and go with whatever package most people have used. Then they sit back and settle for mediocre results.

To be fair, most people don’t know that their results are lackluster. They simply assume that they’ve picked the best possible option for their needs. This is why Los Angeles colocation is so vital. It gives you everything you need in terms of hosting, but without the kinds of problems you might expect from going the cookie-cutter route.

Colocation is hosting with hardware you design that then gets stored in a facility monitored and managed by professionals. If anything goes wrong, you have people on hand who can address them. This is truly the best of both worlds.

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LA web hosting is growing in popularity and for good reason. An LA data center like colocation comes with all of the benefits you’d expect from this option, but with far more versatility. Let Rack Alley show you!

Tips in Colocation Services

Written by Rack Alley

Are you looking for a LA colocation facility? Selecting a host and colocation company that is near to your business can be handy in times that you encounter problems or when you need to upgrade and both require hands on time. There are numerous hosting companies with Los Angeles data centers that are available for colocation. But before you sign any deals, here are some tips on how you can determine your best options.

Determine how much space and servers do you need. Colocation services and plans differ based on the number of servers you want. This can range from a single server unit up to renting a whole private cabinet. Next thing to check is their network IP providers. Check who their primary and fall over providers are and verify if the network providers are reliable and has great SLA ratings.

Security and compliance to the latest technology and infrastructures is very important in choosing colocation. Some businesses require special security systems. If you require HIPAA, FISMA and other industry compliance standards, check first with your colocation choices if these are available. There several colocation facilities that are compliant with security and service organization control standards

Customer service and 24/7 support for your servers and data centers are very important. If possible, choose Los Angeles colocation companies with 99.99% uptime SLAs. Understand that nothing is perfect and unplanned downtimes can happen. The company should have a contingency plan on how to solve problems efficiently and fast. In e-commerce, a single minute downtime can cost you thousands of dollars. Though prevention is always promised, in case there’s a problem, make sure that they have high level engineers available round the clock.

Rack Alley offers colocation services that ranges from 1U Server to Full Cabinet. Visit their site to learn more about the specifics, bandwidth and pricing for different plans.

What to Look for in a Hosting Company

By Rack Alley

If you need an LA web hosting company, you won’t have any trouble finding options. LA is one of the densest places n the country in terms of hosting companies. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re all created the same or equally worthy of your consideration. Here are a few things to consider before hiring a Los Angeles colocation company.

First, should be that they actually offer the services you need with the option to only select those. You may not need colocation, for example, so there’s no point in paying for it and you shouldn’t have to.

Furthermore, they should have enough of a track record that you can look into their reputation. While there are many startup hosting companies in LA, you’ll really be better off with a servicer that has been in the business for a while so you can see how they’ve performed.

Redundancy needs to be a concern too. This means your hosting company has to be able to backup your files in case something happens. This is especially important in LA where earthquakes could cause potential problems in this area. Without backup plans in place, you could stand to lose a lot of information.

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Rack Alley is your one stop shop in a Los Angeles data center. Whether you need colocation, hosting, support or just about anything else, Rack Alley has the resources, redundancy and expertise to ensure you get what you’re looking for at the best possible price.

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