Basic Understanding of Web Hosting

October 13th, 2009 by Dhruv Patel | Filed under Hosting.

by Dhruv Patel

Initial Summary

In this online world, everybody wants to make their presence online. In today’s world, people buy necessary things online. So every business needs to have web site. In order to make web site you need to have web space. Web space is a space where your site’s pages are located. This web space is provided by web hosting services.

Free Web Hosting

Many hosting service providers provide free web hosting service. So they are not charging a dime to you. These free web hosting service providers make money by placing ads on your web site. There are also many technical limitations in free web hosting. Free web hosting is not recommended for professional sites. You can use free hosting for hosting your personal web sites.

Shared & Dedicated Web Hosting

Paid web hosting is necessary to host your business web site. You can’t trust free hosting for that. Paid web hosting comes in two forms. 1) Dedicated Web Hosting & 2) Shared Web Hosting. In dedicated web hosting, you get the full server access. Your web site is hosted on your own server. In shared web hosting, you share the server resources with many other sites. Dedicated hosting is much more costly than shared web hosting.

Components of Web Hosting

There are many components of web hosting. Web hosting space and bandwidth are main components of web hosting. Some other factors to consider are more than one domain hosting, FTP and SSH access, PHP , reliability, customer support and of course price. One can select best web hosting for him based on these factors.

Web Space & Bandwidth

Web space is the space where your website can be hosted. It is measured in bytes. For most of site it is less than 3 Giga Bytes. Most of service provider now provides unlimited bandwidth and web space. You can select service provider based on web space and bandwidth limit.

Limited Domains Hosting or Unlimited Domains Hosting

When you place pages of your site at hosting providers, it’s called one domain hosting. Some hosting companies offer limited number of domain hosting while some offer unlimited number of domain hosting. If you are going to need to host many web sites then look for unlimited domains hosting.

SSH & FTP

You need some kind of access to the server for uploading pages. This access is provided in two forms of protocols. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) & Secure Shall (SSH). All hosting service providers give FTP access to upload your pages on the server. SSH access is not provided by all hosting providers. Only few providers allow SSH access.

PHP and Extensions

Another common feature is a PHP support. Your web hosting server need to provide PHP server side support. You can make many dynamic pages using PHP support. PHP support is must for any web site in today’s world. There are also few extensions which should be available in PHP support. Some web hosts give access to make changes in the PHP extensions. Although as an ordinary user, you don’t need to change any PHP extension setting.

Uptime & Response Time of Web Host

You need to decide also the reliability of the server. This is measured in uptime and the response time of the server. Web host should provide quick response time of the page requested on your web site. Also the uptime should be higher than 99.9%. If you are getting less up time than 98% then you need to change your web host.

Customer Support – Phone & Email Support

Customer support is also an important factor to consider. You need to have good customer service to generate good user experience. All web hosts provide 24×7 supports by email. Some do provide instant online support and only few provide phone support. Support is also an important factor while purchasing hosting service.

Price of Hosting

Price is also an important factor. You will get shared hosting account from $3 to $9 per month price. You get dedicated hosting account around $150 per month.

About the Author:

Dhruv Patel is a customer of DreamHost. He has created site to help new DreamHost customers and to promote DreamHost by giving DreamHost coupon.

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