A hosting audit is a full review of an existing hosting environment and the websites and services running on it. You might consider doing an audit if you’ve experienced issues with hosting that your provider has been unable to resolve, or you’re simply considering switching hosts for other reasons.
The audit is an information gathering process that checks everything from hardware specification, resource consumption, versions/build numbers of the operating system, software and website applications, traffic usage and behaviours, site speed test (TTFB) results, to domain name registrar/DNS information and much more. The audit’s purpose is to provide all this information in a useful format and allow agencies to make good business decisions using the data.
The key objectives are:
1. To establish how effective the existing hosting solution is in terms of performance, capacity, security, scalability, and reliability.
2. To provide insights, explanations, and recommendations to resolve any negative issues or challenges being experienced. For example, if sites are seeing slowness at specific times of day, the audit may help to find the cause.
3. To build a proposal, using the analysis results from the audit, to improve on the existing hosting service, and provide a more suitable and cost-effective solution for the agency’s web hosting.
4. To provide a full dynamic domain name audit in an easy-to-read document. This checks the registrar and all DNS information (A, MX records etc) in real-time. A spreadsheet is produced that is then used as a working document during a migration process. This helps ensure that nothing is missed, and no mistakes are made during a migration.
5. To formalise a migration plan that works best for each agency, and ensures transfers complete as smoothly as possible without disruption to customers
Our last post in the series on choosing a hosting plan of suitable specifications for your customers will discuss website migrations and if they really can be done painlessly.