Webhosting: A 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?
Although getting the domain name may be the first consideration, consideration has to be offered to the ability to what a website really is. Basically, the images, texts and graphics that a person sees on their screen is a bunch of file that are combined by a code consisting of HTML. Having compiled your files, they need to be stored somewhere to enable people, as long as they have access to the internet, to see the site. This is where the web host comes in and it can be described as space rented on a server. The role of the web server is to allow a computer to obtain the files that have been stored. Another task is that it provides the requested files to a computer which can then display the website. This delivering makes the name server akin to a waiter who serves the public 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.
As there is a provision of service and the server requires maintaining and updated, there is normally a charge or monthly payment for using web hosting. This fee will also be responsible for maintaining information in a data center which is secure and is enable with a speedy internet connection. These services don’t come for free and requires payment. Hiring a person who is trusted with placing his computer onto a web server can be a sensible decision. This will incur a fee but can be worthwhile if the person does a reliable and trustworthy job.
Varieties of Web Hosting
Shared Hosting- Although there are websites such as Yahoo! which are able to provide access for everyone on the internet, it is more common for a site to have a narrower target market, which means they don’t require an almost infinite amount of pages. This means that the complete services of a web server is not required by the majority of web sites. It is said that in excess of 95% of the websites that are available are hosted on shared hosting sites. This is where more than a single website is held on a specific server and this method costs less than a dedicated hosting service. This is due to the fact that is spreads resources and costs over a number of different users. The reduction in cost is a reason for its popularity and shared, or virtual, hosting allows every client to have an agreed proportion of the resources available on the server. Depending on how much resources are being used, with respect to number of email accounts, amount of disk space being used, size of bandwidth, the price will vary accordingly.
Dedicated Hosting- Having a web server that is dedicated to you is worthwhile if you believe your website will have many visitors or you do not wish to share a server with others or you do not wish to dominate shared resources. This equates to renting out an entire server for you and is known as dedicated hosting. The machine remains the property of the web hosting company as does hardware maintenance and web host software but responsibility for use and configuration of the server is given to the user. A variation on this theme is provided with semi-dedicated hosting and this is where the web hosting service is extended to a few clients, usually between two and four, and there are clear boundaries between the companies. This is viewed as managed hosting as the host company manages and maintains the server. As may be expected, dedicated hosting is dearer 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-Although variations of web hosts have been mentioned it is more accurate to say that different version of the UNIX server is where the majority of web servers are run on. The UNIX system was pushed by universities as a method to assist servers and networks. The open source nature of the UNIX operating system has enabled technically minded people to gain the code for the system and produce variations of it. The popular ones of BSD and Linux that are part of the UNIX system have produced variations such as Red Hat Linux, Debian, FreeBSD and SuSE. This means that UNIX hosting is a low cost and highly efficient operating system for web hosts to get their hands on. This in turn allows the web host to charge a lower price for their services. Key benefits of the UNIX hosting platform is that the software will allow users the ability to complete a great number of programming applications and the platform is generally considered to be secure, reliable and packing a mighty punch. The phrase ‘UNIX hosting’ now comes to mean any platform that has been derived from the traditional form if UNIX.
Windows Hosting- It is no secret that Microsoft offers a huge range of commercial products and services and the Windows Server 2003 is but one of them. This product needs a license for the buyer to operate it and this immediately makes it a costlier system than its competitors. Considering it is dearer, it also provides less power and a lower level of security than UNIX systems, which are ideal for clients who are in a network situation. Many programmers have a preference for ASP, ASP.NET and ColdFusion and these scripting languages have to be run on server that is dedicated to Windows with the Microsoft SQL server or Microsoft Access and its database programs being strong examples. If you like the concept of being able to use these then you will require having a Windows host.
Filed under: Ecommerce