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Web Hosting - A Guide for Beginners
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 in not knowing 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 connected to
the Internet at very high speeds. Hosting companies maintain
large networks of high-powered web server computers in a
physical location known as a data center. These computer servers
are connected to a very fast, and generally redundant, Internet
connection. The data centers have primary and backup power, a
fast 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 signed up, they can upload files to their personal
space on the web server and the information is then viewable 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 out of your own home or data center. This is the
reason 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, reseller, and dedicated. Each type of
hosting is for a different purpose.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared web hosting is the most popular form of hosting. Shared
hosting is a portion of disk space and bandwidth provided to you
by the web hosting company on a high-powered server. There are
many other web sites hosted on this server, and the hosting
company is likely to have quite a few 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 and don't have more than a couple
thousand daily visitors to your site.
Reseller Web Hosting
Reseller web hosting is a popular, low-cost solution to starting
your own web hosting business. There are two types of reseller
hosting, private-label and a reseller of services.
The private-label is the best type of reseller plan because it
allows you to retain full control over your customer's websites.
A private-label plan allows the reseller to keep the full
monthly payment of the web-hosting customer, but the reseller
must pay a monthly fee to the larger hosting company for the
reseller space. The more hosting accounts a private-label
reseller can sell, the higher the profit for them. Private-label
hosting allows you to host many more websites than if you were
using shared hosting for each. This is a great solution for
someone who has many sites they need to host in one location to
save money.
The reseller of services plans resell the regular 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 customer. This plan does not allow control
over customer web sites and you only keep a portion of the
potentially monthly revenue.
Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated web hosting is the most powerful and cost effective
solution of hosting a busy web site without resorting 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 allows
for the greatest of configuration options. Anyone who has a busy
website will find dedicated hosting is the necessary choice.
Web Hosting Considerations
Wondering about all the other information listed in web hosting
plans? In this section, I will explain the most important
considerations in choosing a good web host.
Price
The price of web hosting services is one of the most important.
There are many hosting companies out there with cheap hosting
packages, but they may be lacking in other areas. Don't let the
price of a hosting package fool you. There are some hosting
companies out there who have great prices and the other features
are just 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 web host.
Disk Space / Storage Space
Disk space is the amount of physical storage space a web host
gives to you to store your web files. Hosting companies 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 / Data Transfer
The amount of bandwidth available can make a big difference 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. Be wary 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 in
hopes the average user won't use much.
Customer Support
In any business, it is very important to provide exception
customer service. Web hosting is no exception to this. Many of
the hosting companies 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
goes down in the middle of the night when they're not available,
this means lost revenue for a business. You should make sure the
web host you select is always available for support.
Money Back Guarantee
Most web hosting companies will provide a thirty-day money back
guarantee. Some will provide one even long, but be wary of the
ones who offer no money back guarantee. I would not purchase web
hosting services from a company who does not offer at least a 30
day money back guarantee, unless they have proven themselves to
be a leader in the industry and have an excellent reputation.
Operating System
An operating system is a piece of software that controls the
interaction between the computer user and the physical hardware
of the machine. A vast majority of all web sites on the Internet
run on the Linux operation system. Linux is generally much more
stable than Windows. Stability is critical in running a web
site. For this reason, I prefer to host my web sites on the
Linux operating system. Some sites have specific requirements
that only the Windows operating system 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 often the data
is backed up, 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
administrator 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 interface. My
favorite 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 demo of the control panel they use with their hosting
plans. The control panel used is a matter of preference, but it
should 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. What you need to watch out for is the companies that
have decided to be a little strict on their email accounts and
only offer a small number or a small amount of message space.
Uptime
Uptime is a term used to describe how often the average web site
hosted by a company is available online. No company should be
expected to provide an exact 100% uptime. This is impossible due
to things such as hardware, software, and power failures. A vast
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
is probably not worth hosting with that company.
Statistics
As a webmaster, it is nice to know how many visitors you've had,
where they came from, how long they stay on your site, and how
much bandwidth they've used. This information is collected by
the web server and is placed in a log file. A statistics
software package can read this data and provide meaningful
information to the webmaster. The information gathered from
these logs 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 languages 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 to load information from an external database.
Scripting languages have made electronic commerce possible. Some
of these languages include PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion, VBscript,
Javascript, and Perl. I won't go into the details of these in
this article for the sake of complexity. If you know how to use
these languages, you should know what to look for in a web
server for them.
Databases
A database is a place to store data that can be used in a large
variety of ways. Databases are used on the Internet for
applications such as shopping carts, message boards, and product
catalogues. The more databases the web hosting provider allows
you to create, the most applications you can deploy on your web
server. Databases are used by the more advanced web master, but
information is freely available online should you be interested.
Conclusions
Web hosting can be a very difficult decision with the many
thousands of hosting companies 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!
About the author:
James has extensive experience with web hosting and has created
a site for the purpose of conveying this information. For more
information about web hosting Click Here.