Hosting Definition

You have an idea that you would like to convert into a site? Your first move should be to retain your enthusiasm and discover a spot for your web page online so that it will be always visible to the whole world.

Where should you host your website?

Since the number of websites on the web has grown rapidly over the last couple of years, the demand for web hosting services has also lead to the birth of incalculable hosting vendors. These are companies that offer you hard drive storage space for your own site on their hosting servers.

Varieties of web hosting services

The scope of hosting services varies enormously, so do the demands of the web site owners. The most basic type of hosting is the small-scale file hosting solution, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a web-based web hosting Control Panel. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer this service free of charge. Personal web site possessors and firms can also get website hosting services from various web hosting suppliers. Personal website hosting services are usually either free, advertisement-sponsored, or modestly priced. Business website hosting services normally cost more, but because of the gigantic rivalry on the marketplace, a growing number of hosting vendors, like us at hostprod.com, offer business website hosting services at slashed prices and with flexible invoicing intervals.

Sorts of web sites and their prerequisites

The free website hosting platform is normally sufficient for personal web sites like portfolios or online journals. A bigger site, such as an online community website or a corporate page, needs a more powerful website hosting platform that offers database support and application development platforms (for example PHP). If you would like to create a web shop, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) must be supported by the web hosting packages provider of your choice. These days, Secure Sockets Layer certificates are offered by the majority of hosting vendors.

The web hosting Control Panel

The hosting accounts provider typically also offers a hosting Control Panel graphical user interface for handling your web content, mails, mailbox aliases, domain names, DNS records, and so on.

Service uptime

When choosing a hosting plans provider, network uptime is a very vital aspect. The accessibility of a web site is measured on a yearly basis by taking into account the time when the website is publicly available and discoverable on the World Wide Web. Network and service availability guarantees, therefore, should be accurately considered when signing up for a web hosting package. The best thing to do is double-check the SLAs and the Terms of Use of the hosting supplier of your choosing in advance. Finding online reviews from current customers is also a quite intelligent move before you choose to sign up.

The shared hosting solution

The most popular and modestly priced type of web hosting service is the shared web hosting solution. It offers 24x7x365 customer support, which is a huge advantage for users who do not want to deal with server maintenance procedures, but could also hinder users who would like to exert more control over the hosting server. For such customers, a VPSs or a dedicated servers would be more appropriate. Most standard applications and scripts work okay on a shared server. Moreover, the shared web hosting solution is more affordable than other types of web hosting solutions, such as the dedicated hosting, because the host divides the shared web hosting server among many customers. The shared hosting solution usually includes usage restrictions that ensure that the different clients do not interfere with each other and that the server remains stable.

Administering your shared web hosting account

Shared website hosting plans usually include a web-based web hosting Control Panel GUI, like cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, etc. Most of the big web hosting companies, again like us at hostprod.com, utilize their very own personal custom-developed web hosting Control Panel user interface.

Web server maintenance

With the shared hosting platform, the web hosting supplier is responsible for administering the web and e-mail servers, for installing web server software, security updates and patches, and for providing tech support to its clients. Most web servers are based on the Linux OS. The hosting provider's admins are in charge of keeping the Operating System up to date, unless you have a dedicated hosting server and root-level access.