So you're looking to learn about Web Hosting and what it has to offer or you may not know much about Web Hosting? There is no shame VPS Hosting in being unsure of this information. Everyone has to start at the beginning at some point. On that note, lets begin learning about Web Hosting.

First off, what is Web Hosting and how does it work?

Web Hosting is the business practice of providing space and bandwidth on a high-powered computer server that is linked to the internet at very high connections. Contains maintain large networks of high-powered web server computers in a physical location known as a data center. These computer servers are linked to a very fast, and generally unnecessary, Internet connection. The data centers have primary and backup power, a rapid connection to the internet, and a security monitoring staff.

The Web Hosting companies provide a share of disk space and available bandwidth to a customer for a monthly fee. Once the customer is opted, they can add files to their personal space on the web server and the information is then watchable to anyone interested on the internet. The monthly fee the Web Hosting company charges is much less than what it would cost to run a server away from your own home or data center. This is why these companies exist. They take care of all the hardware, software, and other technical needs for you.

Types of Web Hosting

There are many different types of Web Hosting offers, but the main three are shared, supplier, and dedicated. Every type of hosting is for a different purpose.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared Web Hosting is the most popular form of hosting. Shared enviroment is a part of disk space and bandwidth provided to you by the Web Hosting company on a high-powered server. There are many other web sites managed on this server, and the hosting company is likely to have quite some of these servers in a large data center. The resources of the server are shared by as many other websites as are allocated to that computer.

Shared Web Hosting is the best form of Web Hosting if you are looking for a great price , nor have higher than a couple thousand daily visitors to your site.

Supplier Web Hosting

Supplier Web Hosting is a popular, low-cost solution to starting your own Web Hosting business. There are two types of supplier hosting, private-label and a supplier of services.

The private-label is the best type of supplier plan because it allows you to retain full control over your consumer's websites. A private-label plan allows the supplier to keep the full monthly repayment of the web-hosting customer, but the supplier must pay a monthly fee to the larger hosting company for the supplier space. The more hosting accounts a private-label supplier can sell, the higher the profit for them. Private-label hosting allows you to host many more websites than if you were using shared enviroment for each. This is a great solution for someone who has many sites they need to host in one location to save money.

The supplier of services plans sell the normal Web Hosting plans of a larger Web Hosting company, but you get a discounted price for providing the customer and earn a monthly fee for as long as they remain a person. This course of action does not allow control over customer web sites and you only keep a part of the potentially monthly revenue.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated Web Hosting is the worthwhile and cost effective solution of hosting a busy web site without relying on to buying your own equipment and paying hundreds of dollars per month for a fast Internet connection. Dedicated hosting consists of single server with no one else hosting on that computer. This permits for the greatest of setting options. Anyone who has a busy website will find dedicated hosting is the necessary choice.

Web Hosting Considerations

Wondering about all of those other information listed in Web Hosting plans? In this section, I will explain the most important considerations in choosing a good webhost.

Price

The price of Web Hosting services is one of the most important. There are many contains out there with cheap hosting packages, but they may be lacking in other areas. Don't allow the above the price of a hosting package fool you. There are some contains out there who have great prices and the other features are just nearly as good. Price may be one of the most important decisions of a Web Hosting plan, but there is much more to consider in choosing a quality webhost.

Disk Space and Storage space

Disk space is the amount of physical storage space a webhost gives to you to store your web files. Contains these days have plans with disk space being measured mostly in terms of gigabytes, but some are still offering plans in the megabytes for storage space. Depending on your needs for file storage space, you may need more or less. Generally the more disk space offered, the better.

Bandwidth and Data Transfer

The amount of bandwidth available can make a positive change in choosing a quality hosting plan. In general, the more bandwidth a hosting company makes available to you, the better. This means you can support more traffic to your web site as your business grows. Keep clear of Web Hosting companies that offer unlimited or unmetered bandwidth. While many of these are legitimate offers, there are some out there who are overselling their bandwidth assured the average user won't use much.

Customer care

In different business, it is very important to provide exclusion customer service. Web Hosting is no exclusion to this. Many of the contains are available all day and night in case you have a problem with your web site, but there are some who are just available specific hours of the day. If your web site crashes in the middle of the night when they're not available, this means lost revenue for a business. A few the web host you finally choose is always available for support.

Money backrefund

Most Web Hosting companies will provide a thirty-day money backrefund. Some will provide one even long, but keep clear of the ones who offer no money backrefund. I would not purchase Web Hosting services from a company would you not offer at least a thirty day money backrefund, unless they have proven themselves to be a leader in the industry and have an excellent reputation.

Os

An os is a piece of software that controls the interaction between the computer user and the physical hardware of the machine. A massive majority of all web sites on the internet run on the Linux operation system. Linux is generally much more stable than Windows. Stability is crucial in running a web site. For this reason, I prefer to host my web sites on the Linux os. Some sites have specific requirements that only the Windows os can satisfy, but there are always alternatives to those requirements.

Backup

A good Web Hosting company will have a regular schedule to backup the data on all the web servers. The more usually the data is secured, the better. At the very least, a Web Hosting company should backup web site files daily.

Control Panel

The control panel is the point of contact the web site officer will have between the host server and their own machine connected via the internet. It is essential to have a well organized and easy to use control panel user interface. The best control panel is cPanel, which is one of the leading Web Hosting control panels out there today. Plesk is another good one, and many companies will create their own control panel for you to use. Most Web Hosting companies will provide a link to a simulated of the control panel they use with their hosting plans. The control panel used is a matter of preference, but it must be user-friendly.

Email

Email is essential part of communication on the internet. Most Web Hosting companies out there will give you more email addresses and more space to hold email messages than you will ever need. Tips to watch out for is the companies that have decided to be a little strict on their email accounts and only have a small number or a small amount of message space.

Uptime

Uptime is a term used to describe how usually the average web site managed by a company is available online. No enterprise should be expected to provide a detailed 100% uptime. This is impossible due to things such as hardware, software, and power failures. A massive majority of the companies are very good with uptime, and they guarantee it. It is still a good idea to be conscious of the uptimes posted by the company. If it is not at least 99. 5%, it will not be worth hosting with that company.

Statistics

As a webmaster, it is nice to know how many visitors you've had, where they originated in, how long they stay on your site, and how much bandwidth they've used. This information is collected by the web server and is put in a log file. A statistics software package can read this data and provide meaningful information to the webmaster. The information gathered from these firelogs can be very valuable in improved services to the viewers of the web site.

FTP

FTP stands for file transfer protocol. It is a way of quickly uploading or downloading many files to and from a web server. Most Web Hosting companies will allow their customers access to their Web Hosting accounts via FTP. FTP is very useful and is a great feature to have when paying for a Web Hosting account.

Scripting

Since the world wide web began, many scripting dialects have been created and have evolved into the dynamic and interactive environment we enjoy today. A scripting language is a way of adding functionality to a web site, whether it be to calculate numbers or even load information from an external database. Scripting dialects have made electronic commerce possible. Some of these dialects include PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion, VBscript, Javascript, and Perl. I won't enter in the details of these in this article in the interests of sophistication. If you know how to use these dialects, you should know what to look for in a web server for them.

Directories

A database is a destination for a store data you can use in a large variety of ways. Directories are used on the internet for applications such as shopping carts, message boards, and product magazines. The more directories the Web Hosting provider allows you to create, the most applications you can deploy on your web server. Directories are used by the more advanced web site admin, but information is freely available online if you're interested.

Findings

Web Hosting can be a very difficult decision with the plenty of contains out there. It is critical to find a plan that fits your needs and to have a good hosting company. I hope this article was useful in making your decision about which company to host with. Happy Hosting!