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What Is A Web Hosting Company ?
A web hosting company or web host is a service
provider that places your web site on a server which is connected to
the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to
access your website. The computer that the web hosting company uses
is typically just like the computer you have at home, the only
difference being that it is set up to serve up web sites and is
therefore called a "server".
A web hosting company will typically have a
fast connection to the Internet and they may be providing hosting
for thousands of web sites on many servers. The web hosting company
essentially rents out space to business and private users so that
they can get their website up on the world wide web.
Some large web hosting companies own their own
datacenter (collection of servers), some rent a server from a larger
web hosting company and then resell the space under their own
company name. In this case the web host will manage your account on
the server, but they will be renting the actual web space from
another much larger company.
Most web hosting companies do not own a
datacenter, but rent web hosting space in a datacenter and supply
there own servers to the datacentre.
There are thousands of web hosting companies
available in the market, all with different types of plans and at
different prices. It can be hard to wade through all the options,
especially if you are completely new to web hosting and just want to
get your website up on the web. All web hosting plans have some
basic common features:
Server Type
This is the type of server software that is
running on the server. Windows 2000 server, Linux and Unix are
common server types. If you have a basic website then the server
type does not matter. If you have a more complex website that has
database functions and serves up dynamic pages, then the server type
will be more important
Disk Space
This is the amount of actual space available to
you for storing your website on the web server hard drive
Bandwidth / Month
This is a measure of how much website traffic
is available to you. Every time somebody looks at your website, data
has to be passed over the Internet from the web server where your
site is hosted to the browser of the person looking at your site.
Bandwidth is a measure of how much transfer is available. High
traffic sites like Yahoo for example have very high bandwidth
requirements, but the average site does not
Email Accounts
How many email accounts you can have with the
web hosting account.
How Does My Website Get a Name ?
All websites typically have a name - just like
we are called www.inventivehosting.co.uk - This is a name that
points to the space on the web where your website is physically
located. In reality, your website will have an address which is just
a set of numbers. This is called an IP address and it looks
something like this
213.228.214.211 An IP address is a unique address
(just like a street address) for your website location. Domain names
like www.harveysinghandfriends.com are really just a pointer to the
real address. This makes it much easier to remember websites.
When you buy web hosting it can be easier to
let the web host handle everything associated with this. You just
tell them the name that you want (www.yoursite.com for example) and
so long as that name is available, they will set up your web hosting
space so that when people type in that www address, it will
automatically go to your website. You can check if a domain name is
available on our domain registration page.
If you already have a domain name and need to
transfer it to a web hosting account, then the domain records have
to be pointed to your web hosting company. Most web hosts will
handle this for you, but if you need to do it yourself then you will
need to contact the company where you registered your domain name
and provide the Nameserver address of your web hosting provider.
Your web host will tell you what their Nameservers address is.
You probably don't want to buy your web hosting
plan until your website is ready, but you might want to buy your
website name early to prevent somebody else taking the name you
want. Almost all companies that sell domain names will park your
domain on their servers until you are ready to buy web hosting.
Different Kinds Of Web Hosting
There are different kinds of web hosting setups
and dependent upon your website and budget, any of these may be the
right type. This is not a discussion of the features a web hosting
plan may offer - just a description general types of web hosting
Free Web Hosting
It is possible to get free web hosting
accounts. These are great for small websites, but normally you have
to have a banner ad at the top of every page. Some free accounts let
you use your domain name (free virtual hosting) and with some your
website address is a subdomain of the free hosting company (www.yoursitename.freehosting.com).
This second type is called Free Sub-domain hosting.
Hosting for small websites can be very cheap,
but If you can answer yes to all of the following questions, then
free web hosting may be right for you.
I don't care about having ads at the top of
every page in my website
I don't care about the performance /
reliability of the website
I don't expect any customer support
My website is very small and will never grow
Shared Hosting
This is the most common type of web hosting
account and can be very low cost. With paid shared (virtual) hosting
you pay a monthly fee and get a share on a server. For very low cost
plans you may only have a small amount of disk space and a low
amount of bandwidth (although this will probably not be a problem
for the vast majority of websites). With cheap virtual hosting plans
you maybe one site amongst hundreds on the same server - in this
case reliability may suffer. For slightly more expensive plans you
will probably find better reliability.
Dedicated Hosting
With dedicated hosting you have a full server
dedicated to your website. This gives you a lot more freedom and you
can host potentially hundreds of your own websites. Typically you
will have access to the server just like you have access to your PC
at home. Dedicated servers are normally reserved for large ecommerce
type websites, sites that get a lot of visitors (thousands a day),
or for people that want to start their own hosting company and sell
shared hosting accounts. A dedicated server is more reliable, but
also much more expensive being at least £100 a month vs £1 - £20
range of a shared hosting plan.
Co-located Hosting
This is very similar to dedicated hosting,
except that you own the server rather than rent it. Your server is
placed in the datacentre and connected to the Internet through the
web hosting providers fast Internet connection. You will then pay a
fee for maintenance and bandwidth.
So What Web Hosting Plan Is The Right One To
Buy?
You have a lot of choices in the web hosting
market and it can be very confusing to find the best deal that meets
your needs.
The 1st step before you start to look for a
web hosting company is to determine what your needs are. It can be
very tempting to look for plans that offer everything. There are
many such deals available, even at a low price, but you will be
storing up trouble for yourself. Take a step back and determine
exactly what you need and then use our hosting plan page to find a
plan that matches at the right price from a web hosting company that
you are comfortable with.
Determining Your Needs
DiskSpace
Web pages (html) are normally very small - on
average 40 - 50KB. This means you can store a lot of web pages in a
small amount of diskspace. Images take up more space, but unless you
have a big database driven site - it is unlikely that you will need
very much disk space. Below is terminology used to describe disk
space. If you have a computer at home or the office, then you will
be already very familiar with this.
You can see above that even a lot of pages
doesn't really create a big requirement for disk space. If you own a
computer at home you will already know that hard drives are very
cheap these days. Many web hosting plans will offer large amounts of
disk space. This is fine, it doesn't hurt to have the extra space -
but unless you have a huge site - you will more than okay with 20MB.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is always stated as a monthly limit
in either MB or GB. This is the amount of actual data that can be
transferred from the web server that holds your website, to the
browser of the person who is looking at your website. If you go over
the limit, then either you will have to be an extra fee, or your
website will not be available. The amount of bandwidth you use is
obviously related to the amount of traffic (visitors) that you
receive.
There are web hosting companies that offer
Unlimited bandwidth. This sounds like a good deal. The truth is that
this is nothing but a lie and you should steer clear of web hosting
companies that offer unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a commodity
that costs the web hosting company money - unlimited bandwidth is
not only impossible, but would cost an unlimited amount of money.
When web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth they are trying to trick
you. They know that you will probably not use very much bandwidth.
The moment you try to use a lot of bandwidth - then you will find
your website shutdown.
For most web sites you will not need much
bandwidth. Probably 99% of all websites use less than 2 GB of
bandwidth a month. If you intend to have a lot of downloads of
software, audio or video, then you may end up using a lot more
bandwidth, maybe 50 GB. Adult sites typically use a lot of
bandwidth. Sites like mp3.com require an enormous amount of
bandwidth, but for the average site - a low level will be enough in
almost all cases.
Email Accounts
How many email accounts will you need? Normally
10 is enough, but if you think you might want more then you can use
Support
You need to ask yourself questions like do you
want phone support, or will email support be ok? Do you want support
24 hours a day? If you have a small website that is not critical (i.e
you don't pay your mortgage with website earnings) then you probably
don't need phone support or 24/7 support. It costs web hosting
companies to provide this type of support, don't pay more for a plan
that offers this if you don't need it.
Server Type
If you have a small website, then it is
unlikely that you will need to select a particular type of server
for your website. Windows 2000 server web hosting tends to be a
little bit more expensive than Linux. If you need to run a Microsoft
SQL server database, or use Microsoft Active Server pages then you
should choose Windows2000. If you have no clue what these things
even are - then you don't need Windows2000 - you will almost
certainly be fine with any type of server.
Other Features like Databases, Server Side
Scripting
Web hosting plans can offer a myriad of
confusing features. For the small website it is unlikely that you
will ever need to know about any of them. If you are a web designer
creating complex database driven sites then you will already know
what you need. If after creating your site you have never heard of
ASP, ColdFusion, SQL Server, mySQL - then chances are that you don't
need to worry about any of these things. If you plan to add a
message board to your website then you will need a mySQL database.
This is the most common database used with discussion boards.
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