Web Hosting Guide - part1
A Web Hosting Guide
To expand the field of your business world, setting up a website for making your business a part of the online world of business, is definitely an aspect of paramount significance. Having consolidated the foundation, you; fancy of having a domain name and then follow the idea of finding web hosting for the purpose of the website you’re going to have. Primarily, you start thinking about the suitable web hosting that can help you. So, let me begin with the ABC of this world of web hosting.
What is web hosting?
Not just a domain name, but a group of files linked together by HTML code in order to put on view the text and graphics on a computer is what a website is all about. The compilation of your created files has to be saved somewhere in the computer (with special software) to show others, provided it has an Internet access. Generally speaking, web hosting is a renting space on a web server. A web server lets a computer have the requests from the Internet for the website files that has been stored. It also does send the files to the Internet for the purpose of displaying by the requesting computer. It is called ‘server’ fir its same approach like a waiter in a restaurant.
A web server endows you with many services. It not only exhibits your files to the Internet users but also it can create email addresses on the basis of your domain name in order to send and receive email with them. Added to this service, a web server with a variety of software lets your website run programs, create and manage databases, exhibits video, and many other functions that can be of use. Computer is no barrier here because here software is everything and can make it a server.
I don’t need to say that the monthly payment you make after purchasing a web hosting is needed for the purpose of maintaining and upgrading the server’s hardware and software. It also includes the charge of keeping it online all the time in a secure data center with the aid of a fast Internet connection, and the payment of the people who are doing all these. One can surely roll his or her computer into a web server as soon as it is decided but the idea of entrusting a dedicated person (for this job) with this job is often a better and reasonable one. It requires you to pay that person but it is ideal if the person does it in a reliable manner.
Different Kinds of Web Hosting
Shared Hosting- Websites are usually targeted to a particular section of people for a particular purpose unlike the sites like Yahoo! (Meant for everybody using Internet). So, they don’t have thousands of pages or files. This point towards the fact that websites, in general, don’t need the entire globe of resources of a web server. Let me tell you then that usually the Web servers are capable of handling hundreds of websites at once because they are powerful machines. Over 95% of all websites follow the model of shared hosting that refers to the concept of hosting more than one website on a particular server. Shared hosting is undoubtedly inexpensive as compared to the other types because it not only shares resources of the server among the clients but also the cost. This also contributes to its popularity. Shared hosting (also called virtual hosting) lets each client have a certain amount of each resource. The payment levels vary in accordance with the varied amounts of resources like disk space, bandwidth, email addresses, and many more.
Dedicated Hosting- When you feel the need of having lots of visitors for your big website or you think about dominating resources or feel antipathy towards sharing the server with anyone else who might crash it, you need a web server that is entirely dedicated to you. So, dedicated hosting is all about renting the service of an entire server. Ownership of machine and responsibility for maintaining the hardware and the web hosting software still remains in the realm of the web hosting company but you gain control over the configuration and use of the server. Semi-dedicated hosting is another interesting term where a web server extends service to 2-4 clients with a strong line of demarcation between them. This is also treated as managed hosting for here hosting company maintains the server. Having clarified all the ins and outs, it goes without saying that dedicated hosting is more expensive than shared hosting.
Server Co-Location- The best option for having everything of your web server in your own domain is to purchase one and then maintain it with the aid of your own knowledge about it. It might still not be enough to keep your server aloof from power outages, roof leaks, thieves, unwary employees and other problems. It might not be able to keep your server on the Internet on a fast connection as well but a data center endows you with all these services. One thing needs to be said here that the rental of physical security, uninterrupted electrical power and a high-speed Internet connection for a server is what we know as Co-location. It is very interesting that here you are responsible for the hardware or software maintenance of a co-located server. The data center has no part to play here. Having sufficient knowledge and time to maintain a web server, this option is better and cheaper than dedicated hosting.
UNIX Hosting- Different kinds of web hosting have already been discussed. But, to put it in the right way, one has to say that it is the variants of UNIX that the large share of web servers run on. Basically brought forth by the universities for servers and networking, The UNIX operating system has got many other versions designed by the programmers with the aid of ‘open-source protocol’ allowing them to have the code for the operating system and make any kind of amendments. Linux and BSD (the popular ones) of UNIX system provide varieties like Red Hat Linux, Debian, SuSE, and FreeBSD. If you are a web host, UNIX hosting is cheaper and better than other operating systems as you can get hold of most of its versions for free. It cuts down the cost and lets them tender lower prices. UNIX hosting platforms, which endow you with software to accomplish most web programming applications, are thought to be stable, powerful and secure. With the advancement of technology, the term ‘UNIX hosting’ now denotes any platform derived from the original UNIX.
Windows Hosting- Windows Server 2003 is a commercial product developed by Microsoft. As far as this product is concerned, an operator needs to purchase a license that raises the cost of entire process and gives birth to higher hosting prices. This special version of Windows operating system advanced by Microsoft is less powerful and secure than UNIX instead of Windows being deemed as perfect for users if you are to operate in a network environment. ASP, ASP.NET, and ColdFusion are well-liked for some web programming applications and these scripting languages can only run on a Windows server like the Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access database programs. The idea of using all these requires you to have a Windows host.