Website Hosting

Bridgetown Hosting and iNetPlanet, LLC provide digital certificates for added website security.  An SSL/TLS certificate helps guard against imposter websites by verifying site identity, and provides users with the confidence that the site provides end-to-end HTTPS encryption, to prevent eavesdropping.  For a limited time, all new websites include a free SSL/TLS certificate!  Call for details.

What is a Website Host?

Every website accessible on the world wide web needs a home; this is the host.  The computer that runs a website is called a web server.  When a visitor navigates to a website using browser software (e.g., Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera,  Internet Explorer) using their computer or smartphone, the web page is “served” from the host computer (the server).

Typically a hosting service provider has many individual computers networked together in a data center.  Usually these are dedicated web servers.  Some hosting companies also have other servers, which may be used strictly for backups, file servers, routers, FTP servers, mail servers or other special purposed machines.  The overwhelming majority of web servers run Apache web server software under the Linux operating system, although it the historically very small number of Windows based servers is on the rise.

Some companies will “self-host” their website on their own server.  Few do, however; because it is a rather specialized niche requiring considerable technical know-how and most find it more cost effective to use a hosting company.  A single web server can be home to many websites.  This is called shared hosting.  Shared hosting is less expensive than having a dedicated web server for a single web site.  Unless the website has very heavy traffic (thousands of visitors each day) or special security considerations, shared hosting is usually the best option.

Why Choose BridgeTown?

There are many hosting companies to choose from.  Not all of the website built by BridgeTown are hosted on our servers.  The clients for whom we create websites are not obligated to purchase that service from our company.  Even though BridgeTown is, among other things, a hosting company, we are quite willing to support customer’s websites hosted elsewhere .  Many of our customers already have a website, which simply needs some updating or repair, and they often prefer to stay with their current host.  Those who do choose to host with BridgeTown often do because we are small, local vendor, and hands-on.  BridgeTown has the technical knowledge and the customer focus required to meet the more specialized needs of complex projects.

Because of our smaller size we are able to provide very customized security configurations, run specialized software on our servers, and pay close attention to the needs of our clients.  We supply a level of attentive, personal service not found with giant hosting companies.  We assemble our own servers to meet BridgeTown’s specifications as dictated by project requirements.  This enables our customers to have precisely the correct hardware platform to meet their needs.

BridgeTown takes web security very seriously.  We stay abreast of the latest threats and maintain security features not provided by other hosts.  For example, our server firewalls are configured to block many malicious sources, kicking out hackers before they even reach your website. Protection from hackers is built in to our clients’ WordPress websites using programming code designed to reject known malicious bots page requests and block them from future access automatically.

We select or write, and install all the code needed, and only   the code needed, to efficiently support customer websites.  Each LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server we build is suited specifically to host a single site or group of websites, with due consideration of hard drive capacity,  memory, CPU resources, and load balancing.  As website traffic increases, so too will the resources devoted to that site.

BridgeTown Hosting

(503) 489-8855

Portland, OR

*Free hosting offer has been extended for a limited time.  The offer applies to new website development project customers on our Basic Shared Hosting plan.  Conditions subject to change.