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Article Series: Web Hosting
Teach Me Web Hosting Essentials
Web
Hosting, A Beginner’s Guide
What
is web hosting? Why should you be a web
host? What do you need to be a web host? What different types
of web hosting are there? All of these questions can overwhelm
the erstwhile beginner. Some will stumble over these terms,
and others will flat-out give up. However, there is a way to
make sense of all of this supposed mumbo-jumbo, and that’s
what this article is for. After reading through it, you may
not know everything, but you’ll know enough to get started.
First things first – what
is web hosting? Web hosting is quite
simply just a place where various customers can store files
that will be shared on the Internet. To be specific, there
is a server (computer), which is in a secure data center, which
will host the files you store and present them to visitors
of your web page. As you can imagine, having your own webs
site, you’re going to need some form of web hosting.
What are some of the important
features that have to do with
web hosting? Every web hosting company is going to offer different
features, with different ranges in each one. There are some
features that almost everyone looks for above everyone else,
and here they are: A large amount of disk space. This is first
and foremost in any potential customer’s mind. The reason for
that is that the more space you have, the more people who can
visit your site, and the more files they can see. Once you
run out of room, your site is toast. In a similar vein there
is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred
through your website, be it text, files, music or video. You’re
going to want at the very least fifty gigabytes per month.
Some hosts offer you unlimited bandwidth – be careful with
those, and read the fine print. Other things are too in-depth
to go over in detail, but they are: databases, Front Page Extensions,
perl/php and personal CGI-BIN, a control panel, and POP3 email.
Most web hosting accounts include a massive amount of POP3
email, which allows you to read any email directed to your
domain name.
There are several
different types of web hosting that you
have to know about before you choose one. The best looking
option isn’t always the one you want, and that can really mess
up beginners. Most beginners will look right away for the cheapest
web hosting that they can get, and who can blame them? Cheap
web hosting is perfect for those that have smaller web sites
that aren’t going to get a huge amount of visitors. These usually
cost between $5.00 and $10.00 a month. The next type of web
hosting is known as shared web hosting. Shared web hosting
is a hosted account that is located on a server with a bunch
of other, different accounts. Most web hosting companies are
setup in this manner. Once you become more advanced, you may
delve into windows web hosting. This allows some of the software
that is Windows based to run. UNIX web hosting is used to run
a variety of different types of software, other than the Windows
software. Ecommerce web hosting is almost self-explanatory.
It allows customers to sell products and services on their
web page, and usually includes a merchant account and a free
shopping cart.
Once you become more serious, you’ll want to learn about things
like dedicated servers. A dedicated server is incredibly powerful,
but it has the additional benefit of no one else using that
particular computer to host their website, which means no one
else can screw up your website. Unfortunately, dedicated servers
are very expensive. Managed web hosting is an expansion of
dedicated hosting. The web host will manage your server for
you, and sometimes they’ll do it with no extra charge. However,
some other companies charge a huge amount for this, so you
have to read the fine print. Co-location is when you rent a
secure space with good connectivity while maintaining your
own server. You have your own equipment and only use the web
host for the connection, bandwidth and security. Reseller web
hosting is popular among those interested in starting up their
own web hosting company with only a fraction of the cost. Lastly
there is cold fusion web hosting, which is required for a variety
of applications like the Macromedia Dynamic web server application.
Whatever type of web hosting service you choose, always be
sure to read the fine print. You would not sign a contract
for your house if you didn’t know exactly what it meant, and
it should be the same with web hosting.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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