Data and analytics are the best ways to prove that something isn’t working… or in this case, is working! According to 

, which monitors a website’s availability and performance, our website has had only 10 minutes of downtime in the last 12 months! That’s some seriously solid hosting thanks to 

Now some of you might be thinking “gee, that sounds great and all, but I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.” Don’t worry – its not 

A web hosting service is a company that provides the tools to allow individuals and companies to make their websites available on the internet. Specifically, they provide servers (which are basically high-powered computers) and internet access. The files for your site are stored on the servers which also run specific software to process the code that makes up your website. Depending on your needs, you might have dedicated hosting (a server all to yourself) or shared hosting (you get the picture).

Now you might be thinking “if all I need is a computer and some internet access, can’t I host from home?” Well, yes, technically you could but we’d advise against it. Firstly, think of your home internet access – is it always up? Is your speed and connection always consistent? Then there’s your computer to keep in mind, you’d have to run a web server 24/7. This means that if you ever need to restart your computer, or if it crashes, your website will go down. Finally, unless you know a lot about web security, you’re opening yourself up to outside attack.

Choosing a web hosting service has a lot of variables but here are some tips:

Do you need specific software? Is your site built in, say, PHP? Which version?

Whats the support like? If you’re not a hosting-wiz look for someone with good customer service

Do research into a host’s uptime/downtime

Decide if you need dedicated or shared hosting

Hopefully this is a good start to understanding what hosting is and what to consider when you’re ready to launch your site. When you do launch, consider implementing Pingdom or another service to gather data and monitor your site’s performance.

Hosting

Website Hosting: It's Not as Complicated as You Think

For today’s example, we’re going to show you how to easily create a new DynamoDB table.

This will let you run authenticated AWS commands with 

The easiest way to create a new table is by passing a JSON file with the table schema to the AWS CLI tool.

 to get an idea of all the available options.

You can also use the following command to view the schema of an existing table if you’re going to create something similar:

aws --profile=via dynamodb describe-table --table-name=MyTable

(Note: You won’t be able to use the exact output above to create a new table. First, you’ll have to remove any “Arn”, “Size”, “NumberOfDecreasesToday”, “Count”, and date/time attributes.)

Here’s a sample schema which creates the table 

Once you have the JSON schema, creating the new table is super simple.

aws --profile=via dynamodb create-table --cli-input-json file://Items.json

That’s all there is to it. Now go take a look at

Backend Development

Creating an AWS DynamoDB table from the command-line

We are experts are specifying, designing and implementing the hosting setup your website, app or database needs. 

Hosting

Hosting: Blog Posts

Website Hosting: It's Not as Complicated as You Think

Creating an AWS DynamoDB table from the command-line