Articles

Written by Martyn Ling, January 25^th, 2010.

The Showroom Analogy

A good analogy can communicate a lot but all good analogies will eventually breakdown if pushed too far. So, before I start, this analogy will breakdown if pushed too far but will provide a useful picture for understanding some of the technical jargon about websites.

Imagine that your website is a real, solid showroom (or store) for your business. It has walls, a roof, rooms and doors. It is a showroom with a difference though - it can be picked up and moved wherever you want. Your showroom is great but it needs to be put on a plot of land that has the infrastructure your showroom needs - it needs electricity, water, car parking for customers and good roads for the customers to travel to your showroom on. Can you see it? If you can imagine that, you're a step closer to understanding that website jargon!

Have you ever wondered what "website hosting" is? Well, simply put, it's a plot of land for your website (moveable showroom).

A Plot of Land = Web Hosting

Just like with a plot of land, you can buy it or lease it. If you buy the plot, then you are responsible for setting up and maintaining the infrastructure that makes the plot suitable for visitors and connects it to the rest of the world. If you lease the plot, then you can choose a plot that has the infrastructure you need and the landlord (web host) is responsible for maintaining the infrastructure.

The Size of the Plot = Disc Space

If you have a very large showroom, then you will need a very large plot of ground for it. If your website isn't too big, then you don't need a large amount of Disk Space. Note: physical showrooms don't easily grow in size but websites do - so it's good to have plenty of room to grow.

The Car Park (Parking Lot) = Processing Power

The size of the car park effectively limits the number of customers that a showroom can have at any one time. Similarly, the processing power of your website hosting will determine how many visitors you can have to your website at the same time.

The Road to Your Plot of Land = Data Transfer (Bandwidth)

The Plot of Land where your showroom is located is connected to the rest of the world by a road. If that road is just a single track then access to your showroom will be slow. If it's a 10-lane highway then visitors can easily come and go. The width of the connection that your website has to the Internet will affect the ease of access for visitors too.

Now, where the analogy needs stretching a little is that most website hosting companies limit the amount of traffic to and from websites. So, this is like the company you lease your plot of land from limiting the amount of traffic (by weight) to your showroom. If you exceed the weight limit, you have to pay for anything extra. If this limit is set high enough then it's highly unlikely to ever be a problem for you. Also, if your website doesn't present things that are heavy to transport (e.g. video, music, etc.) then you can have a lot more visitors before you reach the limit. A good website hosting company will warn you well before you reach the limit so that you can do something about it before any charges are made.

A Shared Plot (Shared Hosting) or a Dedicated Plot (Dedicated Hosting)

If you place your showroom on a shared plot, the leasing costs will be lower since the infrastructure costs are shared between several businesses. As long as there is sufficient car parking and a broad enough road to cope with the visitors for all the showrooms then this is a good thing.

Now, what if one of your neighbours suddenly became extremely popular and your part of the car park gets filled up with visitors to another showroom. Well, most website hosting companies monitor the usage of the 'car parks' and the 'road' so that if one showroom is taking too much of the infrastructure, they take action to limit it. Shared hosting is a good option for most small businesses.

For websites that regularly get lots of visitors, dedicated hosting can become a cost-effective option.

(Note: the shared plot analogy breaks down as follows: your website is not visible from other websites that share the same hosting, so you don't get passing trade like you would with a real showroom).

More to come at a later date... If you've found this helpful so far, please let me know by sending me a message using the Contact Form. Thanks!

Disclaimer: as far as I am aware, this analogy is completely original. I have never read or heard a similar analogy used to describe website jargon. Of course, someone else might have had the same idea since it seems a rather obvious analogy to me. If so, any similarity is purely coicidental.