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5 Minute Guide to Web Hosting for Beginners
There're really a few things to look at while choosing a web
hosting plan whether you run a hobby site, a small business
site, or a high-traffic ecommerce site. In fact, all web hosting
plans and terminologies can be classified in terms of cost,
programming languages, operation systems, Web servers and
functionality.
Cost - Cost of web hosting is the first thing that many small
site owners are looking for. Most of web hosting plans cost less
than $10 a month. Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or
cheap web hosting plan often cost less than $5 per month.
Programming Languages - Whether you want to write your own
scripts or install customized software packages, you want to
choose the hosting plans that support the programming languages
of your choice. The commonly used Web development languages
include PHP, ASP, JSP and PERL. The hosting plans that support
those programming languages are referred as PHP Web hosting, ASP
Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting. Almost all
hosting companies support PHP/MySQL, but only a fraction of them
support ASP or JSP. For beginners, PHP/MySQL is the choice for
programming language.
Operating Systems - Once you've picked up the programming
language(s) for your Web development, you still have freedom to
choose the operating system that hosts your Websites. Besides
ASP which works only on Microsoft Windows, other programming
languages, PHP, JSP and PERL, work on Windows, Unix and Linux.
Hosting plans that support particular operating systems are
referred as Window Hosting, Unix Hosting or Linux hosting.
Servers - Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web
hosting industry. One of nice things about Apache server is the
ability of mod_rewrite to make dynamic URL look like static URL
or SEO-friendly among other things. ASP works only on Mirosoft
Internet Information Server or IIS server. Weblogic or Websphere
is needed for JSP hosting.
Performance - When webmasters are talking about Web servers,
they're most interested in the server performance - Managed Web
Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private
Servers (VPS). Shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and you can
host as many sites as you like with a Reseller Hosting option.
VPS costs around $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan will
cost from $50 - $100 or more a month dependent on storage space
and bandwidth of the hosting plan. A shared hosting is good
enough for most of websites. If your website serves heavy
audio/video files, or needs to frequently install customized
software package, you'll need a dedicated server. For example, a
company that sells Computer
Based Training (CBT) software online upgraded its hosting
plan from a shared hosting to a dedicated hosting plan in the
first 6 months of online operation as the company started to use
video/audio support to boost online sales.
Online Transaction Support - Websites that accept payment
online require support of secure connection (HTTPS) and digital
certification to conduct online transaction safely. The
alternative of having your own online merchant account is to use
a third party payment processor for payment process. Integration
of paypal shopping cart only takes about a few minutes without
any knowledge of programming skills.
After all, choosing a web hosting plan that works for you isn't
that complex, even for the beginners.
Copyright @2005, Bruce Zhang
You have permission to publish this article electronically free
of charge, as long as the bylines and links in the body of the
article and the bylines are included.
About the author:
Bruce Zhang has over 10 years of experience in web development.
He currently manages dozens of websites using Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, Managed Web Hosting
and Unix / Linux Hosting for web hosting needs.