David Gilbey has over 10 years of experience being an I.T. technician & consultant, working with a variety of businesses from SMEs to larger blue-chip corporations. He’s now at C4DI with his own startup, JustGilbey Consulting, to work with other startups and to build solid relationships with many different clients, something that was not possible being employed by a larger company.
We chatted to David about a few tips and opinions he has picked up over the years that may be worth bearing in mind to save you some hassle, here's what he had to say:
- When registering a domain, for either personal or business use, be sure to have it registered under your name with your own details, not the person who may be managing your domains/websites (unless agreed otherwise). If something were to happen with that person or relationship, there may be dispute about the domain's ownership, and could cost a lot of time and money trying to ensure your domain actually belongs to you.
- Making backups isn't enough, ensure the backups are completing correctly and spend some time every now and then testing them to make sure the data isn't corrupt and unrestorable. I've heard of too many situations where the backups are corrupt or not running at all and the client doesn't realise for months down the line that they can't retrieve their data, which can often be catastrophic for business.
- Creating a business email address when you have purchased a domain (ie name@mybusiness.com) is a fantastic idea to add credibility and authenticity to your business, rather than having a standard gmail or hotmail account. However it's usually not worth buying cheap email along with the hosting, as they can be notably unreliable, sometimes leaving you without email access for hours on end. Google and Microsoft have much better Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that guarantee their email servers will be live 99.9% of the time, or else you will be refunded. Spending that little bit extra for a trusted email host might just be worth it in the long run!
Get in touch with David if you have any other questions about I.T. management or systems, as he's always happy to lend a hand!