Web Site Hosting - An Easy Guide- BangaloreWebHosting.Com
What is web hosting anyway? What do I get when I buy
a web hosting solution?
To make thing clear from start let's just say how it all works.
Web pages basically consist of text and images. Generically,
the information contained by these files is called content.
The look of the web page is called design.
In order to be accessible to online users, all these files must
be stored on a web server. You can think of web servers as computers
storing the files of tens or hundreds of web sites. These computers
are all connected to the Internet through high-speed connection.
When you access a web page, your browser connects to the web
server that stores that page and downloads it to your computer.
So a web server is a must when you plan to share your web site
content with online users via the Internet. There are thousands
of web servers in the world, and there are companies that own
them. Such a company is called web-hosting provider.
A web-hosting provider can have dozens of web servers hosting
thousands of web sites. The web server computers are found usually
in large numbers and are all housed in special buildings or
sections of buildings called data center . Apart from the high-speed
Internet connection, these locations are set up to ensure the
optimum operational conditions and security for the web servers.
HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning) control,
fire protection, virus protection, data backup facility, power
backup, even autonomy in case of disaster. Another term for
the web servers in the data center is a web farm.
To be able to run your site properly you need a space on the
web server to store your data and an Internet connection to
it. The amount of data available to you on a web server is simply
referred as space and is usually quantified in MB. The Internet
connection needed so that your web site can be accessed online
is referred as bandwidth and is also measured in MB or even
GB.
Having the glimpse of the basics, it must be said that different
web-hosting providers offer different space and bandwidth. Space
and bandwidth are usually the main characteristics of a web-hosting
plan.
The terminology associated with web hosting can be quite dazzling:
virtual web hosting, dedicated hosting; co-locating hosting,
shared hosting reseller hosting.
Shared Web Hosting Shared web hosting or virtual web hosting are two terms
for the same thing. Shared web hosting means that on a web server
are hosted many web sites that all have a defined quota of HDD
space and bandwidth. They all run simultaneously and there can
be from hundreds to thousands of web sites on the same web server.
Given the high number of web sites should you worry about exceeding
the performance of the web server, issue better known as slow
server response, meaning that your visitors will have to wait
too long for your web pages to load.
That is usually not a real problem when dealing with serious
web hosting providers, because the operational parameters of
the web servers are monitored and appropriate actions will be
taken in order to maintain the level of service contracted.
The greater number of web sites sharing the resources of a web
server (HDD space, bandwidth, memory, CPU time), the web hosting
provider can afford to offer its services at a lower cost. A
minus would be that, even with high level of service, you will
have to accept a slower server response time when choosing shared
web hosting.
Reseller Web Hosting When web-hosting providers offer their services, typically
with a discount, to a third-party (a reseller that will thus
become a web-hosting provider itself) and the latter subsequently
offers web-hosting services under his branding. Indeed technically
the reseller web hosting is very similar to shared web hosting,
as many web sites end up sharing space and bandwidth on the
same web server. The resellers usually are web designers or
web developers who offer web hosting services as part of their
integrated services. As the web-hosting provider offers resellers
important discounts, the price they can offer is among the smallest
in the industry.
Compared with the shared web hosting, this system has technical
support problem. It takes time and communication problems may
occur on the course of your problem from the reseller to the
web-hosting provider. Unless your site is a personal web site
or non-commercial one, this poor support issue is enough to
not consider this your primary option.
Continuing this line of thought, how can you distinguish a reseller
from a real web-hosting provider? It's not the professional
design of the web site, not even the support contact facilities
offered as may resellers might have contracts with the provider
on the technical support and the person taking your calls might
be working for the provider and identify himself to you as an
employee of the reseller. Solid company information is made
available usually only by serious providers. The price, that
can get as low as under 5$/month is another hint, but you should
consider it carefully with prices dropping through the industry.
Dedicated Web Hosting In dedicated web hosting one single web server is rented
to a single customer. Although this is the common belief, web-hosting
providers usually divide a single web server computer between
up to three customers. On the other hand there are web-hosting
providers that actually give an entire web server to a customer.
Even with three customers sharing the web server, the dedicated
web hosting option offers the customers the option to host more
than one web site, configure the software to best meet the needs
of his site or scale the available bandwidth.
The high prices combined with the availability of resources
recommend this type of web hosting for highly important web
sites such as e-commerce sites.
Co-location Web Hosting Co-locating web hosting is similar with dedicated web
hosting. The main difference is that while in dedicated web
hosting the web server computer belongs to the web-hosting provider
and is only rented by the customer, in co-locating web hosting
the customer owns the web server computer. The web-hosting provider
only houses the web server computer and sells bandwidth to the
customer. This gives the customer using co-locating web hosting
full control of the web server combined with the security of
the data center.
Now you should be equipped with the necessary information to
decide on you web hosting. You shouldn't try and find the lowest
price possible, but give some extra thought to the quality of
service you are buying and to the support offered by a web host
provider.
