Hosting Definition

If you would like to launch a web site and make it available for the whole world to see, it needs to be hosted on a web server. This service is called is hosting.

Host your web site at home or elsewhere

You could host your web site on your own personal computer at your house or at your workplace, on a personal computer which belongs to a chum of yours, and so on. If it is a site for testing purposes, there would be no real need for you to find a more advanced website hosting solution than that. If you would like to develop an actual web site, however, which will be accessible to numerous individuals and you wish to make it dependable, you will also need a stable web hosting server where you will host it.

Why do you need a hosting server for your web site?

When you have a web site, it is located on a physical server. That physical server has its own physical address known also as Internet Protocol address. Writing the Internet Protocol address of the physical machine in your web browser's address bar, however, is not the best and most convenient method to open a website. That is how and why domain names appeared and why you need one for your web site. Thus, to launch your website, you require your own personal domain name and a web hosting server to host your site on.

Hosting your web site on your own

If you are an Information Technology pro and understand how to administer a web hosting server, you can have a web server of your very own and host your web site on it. This will allow you to exert complete authority over the machine, to implement server configuration changes and to apply software updates yourself rather than having to rely on the data center staff. The negative side, however, is that you will have to guarantee the availability of your website and to take care of all server maintenance procedures yourself. If you are using a licensed Operating System, you will also have to spend money on the license, which is usually more high-priced if purchased for an entire machine.

Using a web host

If you don't want to handle server maintenance tasks, the best solution is to sign up for an account with a web hosting distributor. These are companies that offer clients powerful web hosting servers with various hardware configurations in exchange for a given fee. The hosting servers are stored in data center facilities with special cooling and UPS systems to guarantee continuous Internet connectivity.

Types of web hosting services

The web is a wide ocean and there are lots of hosting service providers delivering various hosting services to the myriad of web site possessors out there. The hosting services range from free-of-charge web hosting services, where you can host simple, HTML-based sites, to high-priced dedicated server web hosting services that can drain your finances. So, what hosting type suits your needs?

If you run a small or medium-size website that has a few hundred viewers tops, you could safely make use of a shared web hosting solution. Shared hosting signifies that many hosting accounts and sites are hosted on the same web server, thus decreasing the price of the web hosting service. Shared hosting accounts ordinarily have central processing unit, RAM, bandwidth and disk drive storage space usage quotas to make certain that the sites accommodated on the hosting server do not intervene with each other and do not use more resources than they are apportioned.

In case your website is busier, you should select a VPS hosting solution, which is the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated hosting solution. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It gives you root-level access, which allows you to implement server configuration changes - something that would be unthinkable on a shared web hosting server. The VPSs also offer burstable RAM memory options. Separate RAM memory and central processing unit shares are allotted to each single virtual private web server, without anyone else utilizing them. Typically there are other VPSs aside from yours that share the resources of the physical machine, which could sometimes influence the overall performance, but in the majority of circumstances it is not a problem. Should the resources of the virtual web hosting server, though, be insufficient for your needs, it is obviously time to move to a dedicated server.

The dedicated servers is a server that you rent, which is utilized solely by you for your own personal website needs. Nobody else shares its resources and you get full server root privileges, can choose the hardware in advance, apply upgrades later on and add RAM or hard drives. Unlike with the VPSs where virtualization is mostly at the OS level and all virtual containers share a single kernel, with a dedicated web server you can modify the kernel of the Operating System (usually Linux-based) too.

Pick your web hosting provider

If you know what your site is going to include, or if you have only a vague plan that has not fully evolved yet, your very first step towards the creation of your site should be to pick a hosting services provider. The best course of action is to find a web hosting solutions provider that furnishes a vast range of web hosting solutions so that you do not have to switch web hosts in case you first use a shared web hosting solution and then outgrow the shared web hosting resources and have to upgrade to a virtual server hosting solution or a dedicated hosting solution. We, for example, deliver low-cost shared website hosting packages, modestly priced OpenVZ and Virtuozzo-based virtual web server hosting packages, semi-dedicated servers with their own web hosting Control Panel interface and even dedicated server web hosting plans. We also offer free bonuses - the shared web hosting cheap domain name if they are paid for on an annual basis, the more powerful private virtual web servers and dedicated server web hosting packages offer a free domain name reseller account and billing software should you wish to utilize them for reselling purposes. Throw in the topflight 24/7/365 customer support service and you have all you would typically require. You could, by all means, discover other web hosting distributors depending on what exactly you are searching for, by carrying out an online search or by examining different hosting reviews online. The most relevant option, however, is a web hosting plans provider that is also a domain name registrar and has web hosting servers in more than one country - both preconditions satisfied by us. We have web servers in the USA, in England and in Australia, and offer loads of domain name extensions for registration.