What Does Hosting Mean?
While web pages are designed and developed on a single computer, they must be transferred to a server, or host, so that they are available to the rest of the world over the Internet. A host is simply a computer that has a constant, high speed connection to the Internet. Hosting companies rent space on these machines. Depending on your needs, a hosting plan can cost anywhere between $5 and $200 per month.
There are different hosting offers depending on the type, the size and the popularity of the site.
The different types of Web hosting services are :
Free hosting
Free web hosting is a service which provides users with the ability to store web sites and media on the Internet for no cost. While there is no monetary cost for the user, some hosts requires the user to place advertisements or links on the web site which is being hosted for free.
Shared hosting
The best choice is shared server hosting for normal websites and smaller ecommerce websites. Your site is located on one of the 1Webcorp.com’s Web Servers. It is the equivalent of leasing office space. A certain portion of the building is yours, with your name on the door, and you can rely on the building manager (1Webcorp.Com) for security, maintenance, and facilities management. This is called “shared” hosting because your home page has its own domain name (www.yoursite.xxx).
Dedicated hosting
Also known as dedicated server. This type of hosting allows a webmaster to rent an entire server. This server is not shared with anybody. This is more flexible than shared hosting (see below), as webmasters have full control over the server, including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Administration, however, is still handled by the hosting company. Disk Space – Refers to an amount of space on a web server’s hard drive. …
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Different Types of Web Hosting Explained
There are many different types of web hosting available. Which type one chooses should hinge upon what one wants to accomplish with his or her web site. Some web hosting services are free, but place ads on web sites. Whereas other web hosting types can be more expensive, but provide a lot more assistance and bandwidth. The four main web hosting types are free web hosting, shared web hosting, and dedicated web hosting (both managed and unmanaged).
Free web hosting is the simplest kind of web hosting that one can get. This type of web hosting is usually supported by ads on hosted web sites. Features for this type of web hosting are limited, and therefore it is a better option for people who are just starting out on the Internet and are interested in having a small site with little traffic. The type of domain one receives in free web hosting is typically a subdomain (yoursite.webhost.com) or a directory (www.webhost.com/~yoursite). Most free web hosts do not have support for MySQL, multiple e-mail accounts, and PHP.
Shared web hosting is actually the most popular type of web hosting service. Shared web hosting allows more than one site to be hosted on the same server. Additionally, the hosts provide system administration. For users that do not want to have the burden of running a sever, shared web hosting is a great choice. The individual hosting plan may differ, but most hosts provide the user with elements such as PHP, ASP, MySQL, more bandwidth, and multiple e-mail addresses. More services are often available in shared web hosting than are available with simple free web hosting (including the ability to have your own domain name!).
The last two types of web hosting are managed dedicated web hosting, and unmanaged dedicated web hosting. Dedicated web hosting is a wise choice for someone who wants more storage and bandwidth, and also wants features that are not available with shared and free web hosting. In dedicated servers, users are not limited to a certain number of databases and e-mail addresses. Additionally, users usually receive a very high amount of bandwidth in comparison to other hosting types. The typical dedicated server plan provides the user with 500 to 1,000GB of monthly bandwidth.
In unmanaged dedicated web hosting, the user is the server administrator. This allows the user the greatest amount of control and flexibility. Of course, many people do not know how to handle the task of being a server administrator and do not want to learn. Therefore, this is not a viable option for some.
When looking for a web host, it is important to consider the purpose of the web site and what one’s capabilities are. Pricing for web hosts is Dependant upon the support, reliability, features, and security one wants. Choosing a type of web hosting may seem like a daunting task, but simply doing research and making an educated decision should yield satisfaction and success on this critical matter.
Paul Hanson recommends Net Explorers ( http://www.hosting-netexplorers.co.uk/ ) for quality UK hosting services.
Traffic: Let Your Web Hosting Company Be Your Guide
Presumably you have a website because you want people to visit it. Visitors are traffic. And generating a constant flow of fresh traffic, both unique and repeat visitors, will take up more of your energies than probably any other website-related task, including website maintenance and sales. It is with this imperative in mind that web hosting companies have begun offering their customers assistance in generating that traffic.
URL Submission
One of the most basic and common ways that web hosting companies help you get traffic to your site is by offering to submit your URL for you to the major search engines, such as Google or Ask Jeeves, for free. While this is certainly a nice convenience, submitting your URL to the major search engines is already free and doesn’t take all that much time. So to impress you with their traffic generating wiles, a web hosting company is going to have to do more than just this.
That said, some web hosting companies include with their free URL submission services, free submission not only to search engines but to directory websites (web portals), classified pages, and blogs. That’s a bit more useful, as your time can be much better spent. Just make sure you know exactly where the web hosting company does submit your URL to and where it does not.
And it’s not as simple as submitting your URL once to each place and leaving it at that. To remain competitive (not to mention relevant), you’ll need to resubmit your URL to each place on a recurring basis. Conversely, however, it is frowned upon and may even be detrimental to your traffic-generating efforts, to resubmit your site too often or too frequently. If your web hosting company offers free URL submission services, find out how often they resubmit it to each place and what guidelines they use to set their submission schedule.
Search Engine Optimization
Many web hosting companies offer free Search Engine Optimization tools and tips with their web hosting services. The object of SEO is to catapult your free listings on the major search engines to the top of the first page of results for your chosen keywords. There are a number of excellent methods for using SEO to dramatically increase traffic to your website, including website review and SEO analysis, keyword and keyword phrase suggestion and selection, and header/footer/meta-tag generation.
Any web hosting company that offers free SEO tools with their web hosting packages is well worth considering.
Reciprocal Linking
Web hosting companies may also offer Reciprocal Linking services, where they help you find other sites that already receive the targeted traffic you desire and arrange to post a link to each other’s site on your own respective sites. This is another of the most effective and beneficial free forms of targeted lead generation. If a web hosting company offers you free reciprocal linking assistance, it’s a definite plus.
Tracking and Reports
Quite possibly the most valuable traffic tool a web hosting company can provide you is tracking. And simple click tracking (tracking how many clicks your homepage/landing page gets) isn’t enough. You want to know and compare the number of unique visitors and repeat visitors. You want to know the paths visitors took clicking through your site. And you want to know your conversion rate, or how many of each type of visit resulted in a signup or a sale.
The best web hosting companies won’t merely track these statistics for you, but they’ll generate reports comparing and evaluating the results and making suggestions on how to improve your traffic generating campaign.
Copywriting
The benefits of heavy traffic (namely: more traffic) don’t come just by getting people to click to your site; you also have to keep them there. One of the best ways to hold a visitor’s interest is with interesting content relevant to what they’re looking for.
Many web hosting companies will help you create compelling and relevant content to post at your site which will serve to key ends; it will captivate visitors to stay at your site (and even click around to explore more of what you’ve got) and it will give you better and better search engine rankings.
Website Building
With that in mind, don’t underestimate the power of a well-designed website. People don’t spend much time on a site that’s unattractive, error-filled (whether textual or graphical) or difficult to navigate. At the absolute least, a web hosting company should give you a website editor/builder that helps you design the kind of website loved by search engines and visitors alike.
Hosting-Review.com is the premier resource on web hosting. Visit http://www.hosting-review.com for comprehensive reviews and rankings of over 50 web hosting providers, as well as informative articles about everything to do with hosting and the top-rated picks for different types of hosting packages.
Underestimating the Value of Free or Low Cost Web Hosting Services and Tools
A variety of free or low cost web hosting services and tools is provided by most web hosting companies. However, in their search for the best web hosting package, many webmasters do a good job of comparing the basic offerings but fail to examine the wide range of additional free or very cheap services and tools offered by their prospective web host.
Overlooked and undervalued
Most web hosts don’t tout these freebies as prominently in their sales copy as they do the basics such as storage space, bandwidth, and tech support. This is simply because they know that most potential customers are only comparison-shopping on the basics.
However, low cost web hosting services and/or free web tools can mean the difference between a robust, customer-friendly web site that supports your expanding business and one that is stuck in low gear just as the traffic begins to increase.
What will you need later?
There is a wide array of these free or nearly-free web hosting services to choose from but first you must know, or at least be reasonably able to predict, the ones you are likely to need when your business grows.
Depending on the nature of your online business you may need some or all of the following:
- Custom web site design
- Search engine optimization services
- Inward and outbound link tracking
- Visitor counts
- Free e-mail
- e-mail forwarding
- Spam filters
- Free web templates
- Free HTML software
- Free website builders
- Auto-responders
- RSS feeds
- Live chat
- Shopping carts
These are just some of the many free or low cost web hosting services and tools you should evaluate before committing to any hosting package.
The bottom line
Stretch your dollars by choosing the low cost web hosting plan that provides as many of these value-packed extras as possible so you don’t wind up having to pay full price for them later when your business finally needs them.
Anthony Hamill is the founder of Web-Host-Watch which is devoted to helping new webmasters learn the basics of web hosting. It provides tutorials, tips on avoiding common mistakes, a glossary of web hosting terms, and a list of Top Web Hosts.
Virtual vs. Dedicated: Which Type of Web Hosting Do I Need?
The choice between the type of web hosting, virtual or dedicated, is governed by several factors that need to be taken into consideration by the site owner. The key for a site owner is to try and fulfill his requirements while staying within his budget. An understanding of the pros and cons of both forms of hosting is the first step in deciding which to choose.
Virtual hosting: This type of hosting is preferred by most small websites. Several websites are hosted on a single server in this form of hosting. Hosting providers offer packages with different combinations of disk space, domain names allowed with each hosting account, and bandwidth allotments. Small sites and blogs that do not require too many resources to run can select a smaller virtual hosting package.
With virtual hosting, the distribution of resources means that the speed of web pages loading depends upon other web sites sharing the web server. If quick download and upload are essential to a site owner’s plan, then virtual hosting which offers sufficient bandwidth should be considered. A good host will ensure that websites with similar resource requirements are hosted together so that site owners pay only for the resources and scripts that are used by them.
Virtual hosts may or may not allow access to non-public directories, these are directories used for storing files that are not meant to be accessed via the word wide web. Small sites that hold sensitive data should check for this facility. SSH/Telnet are important for site owners that wish to communicate directly with the servers and run queries on the databases.
In terms of security, websites can get compromised even when there are no lapses on their part; carelessness on part of neighboring websites on a virtual server can lead to the server getting hacked into and every website may be at risk. However, choosing a good host with solid security will mitigate this risk.
Dedicated hosting: With dedicated hosting, all the resources of a server are made available to the site owner exclusively. Dedicated hosting is best suited for sites that attract a lot of visitors and have a high bandwidth requirement, ecommerce sites that may need special software, or web sites that hold sensitive information and therefore need greater security.
Dedicated servers allow unlimited domain names and greater freedom in managing the website. Dedicated hosting is divided into managed and unmanaged hosting. Managed hosting implies greater support from a technical team that performs regular technical updates and routine maintenance without the site owner having to look into it. Unmanaged dedicated hosting is cheaper than managed dedicated hosting but additional support can be an added cost.
Dedicated servers are accessible only by the host and the site owners; by using features such as secure FTP and encrypted terminal sessions, site owners can be assured of greater security. Webmasters who run multiple sites can also host all their sites on a dedicated server; this enables better management and may work out cheaper than hosting the sites separately on different virtual servers.
Paul Hanson recommends Net Explorers for reliable UK web hosting.