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A Beginners Guide to Web Hosting
What is web hosting? Whenever you visit a website, what you see on your web browser is essentially just a web page that is downloaded from the web server onto your web browser. In general, a web site is made up of many web pages. And a web page is basically composed of texts and graphic images. All these web pages need to be stored on the web servers so that online users can visit your website.
Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, you will need to host your website on a web server. When your website goes live on the web server, online users can then browse your website on the Internet. Company that provides the web servers to host your website is called web hosting providers.
A well-established web hosting provider sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites. For example, iPowerWeb is a popular web hosting company that hosts more than 300,000 websites. For that reason, a web hosting company need many web servers (essentially, these are computers) to 'store' the website. And all these web servers are connected to the Internet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a physical building called 'data center'. In order to guarantee all the web servers are safe, secure and fully operational all time, a data center is a physically secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.
What are the different types of web hosting? There are different kinds of web hosting companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosts can be organized into the following categories:
Shared Hosting
In shared hosting (also known as virtual web hosting), many websites are sharing the space on the same physical web servers. Depending on the web host, a physical web server can hosts a few hundred to even thousand of different websites at one time. You may wonder if a physical web server is shared by so many websites, will the performance of the web server deteriorate? In fact, web servers are usually equipped with high-end powerful computer, therefore it can support up to a certain number of websites without any problem. But when the web server is overloaded and exceeded the reasonable number of websites that it can support, then you will begin to experience a slower response from the web server.
However, a reputable and experience web hosting provider will constantly monitor the performance of the web server and will add new web servers when deem necessary without sacrificing the benefits of the website owners. Since a physical web server is shared (diskspace, computer processing power, bandwidth, memory) by many websites, the web hosting provider can therefore afford to offer a lower hosting price. For the same reason, websites on the shared hosting would have to accept slower server response time. Typically, shared hosting plans start at $5 - $20 per month.
Dedicated Hosting
In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated hosting assigned a specific web server to be used only by one customer. Since a dedicated web server is allocated to only a single customer, the customer has the option to host single/multiple web sites, modify the software configuration, handle greater site traffic and scale the bandwidth as necessary. Therefore, dedicated hosting commands a higher premium and typically starts at $50 per month and can range up to $200 - $500 per month. As a result, dedicated hosting is regularly used by high traffic and extremely important website.
Co-location hosting
In dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the web hosting providers and customers only rent the web server during the hosting period. While in co-location hosting, the customer owns the web server hardware and only housed their web server within the web hosting provider's secure data center. In this way, the customer has full control over their web server and simultaneously benefit from the 24/7 server monitoring and maintenance provided by the secure data center. Depending on the monthly bandwidth and rack space required, typically co-location hosting range from $500 - $1000 per month.
Reseller hosting
In reseller hosting, a web hosting provider offers web server storage to third-party (i.e. reseller) at a discount price, who then resell the web server storage to their customers. Typically, resellers are web consultants including web designers, web developers, or system integration company who resell the web hosting as a add-on service to complement their other range of services. Commonly, resellers can receive up to 50 percent discount on the price of a hosting account from the web hosting provider. And resellers are allowed to decide its own pricing structure and even establish its own branding (in other words, reseller setup its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting plans under its brand).
To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the web host provider. In cases when technical problems such as server down and access problem arise, the resellers will have to correspond directly with the actual web host provider. Due to the communication process taken place between customer to reseller and from reseller to actual web host provider and back and forth, undoubtedly problems will take longer time to resolve. Unless you are running your own personal website or non-profit website and willing to take the risks of poor support from the reseller, reseller hosting is generally not a good option.
However, the web hosting market today is filled with resellers that sell lowest price web hosting plans. So, how do you tell between a genuine web hosting provider from a reseller? You don't judge by the availability of toll-free number alone because some web hosting providers even offer their resellers with their own toll-free number for co-branded technical support. When the reseller's customer calls the number for technical support, the web host uses the reseller's name so the customer thinks that the support is coming from the reseller directly. Likewise, don't be fooled by the professional designed website alone because it is extremely easy to create a professional looked business website nowadays.
In general, resellers can be distinguished from their hosting price and company information. In most cases, a genuine web hosting provider has solid company information such as iPowerWeb.com where they publish its financial background, offices and data centers. In contrast, resellers usually do not have solid company background (here is just an example out of thousands out there). Moreover, the hosting price by resellers is generally below $5 per month. So, why settle for resellers when you can find genuine web hosting providers offering superb quality web hosting at the hosting price ranging between $7 - $10.
Therefore, you should not strive to find the cheap web hosting companies without first considering the quality of the service and support provided. Don't expect to find any top-level support if you choose to pay only $2 or $3 per months for your web hosting plan. On the other hand, by paying just slightly more for your hosting plan, you can now discover a list of low cost yet high quality web hosting plans to host your important website. Look at our high quality and cheap web hosting review and recommendation at http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com/top5.shtml
Andrew Loh is the owner of Cheap Web Hosting, a website that provide complete and detailed review of cheap web hosting reviews. Visit his website at: http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com
Demand Unlimited Auto-Responders with Your Hosting Accounting
AutoResponders are nifty scripts that run in your web server 24/7 serving immediate email responses to questions, support and sales. Think about this, your customer comes to your website and spends a round 200$ to get your product. And after the payment they don't get back any response for the next 10 hours, would they like it? No, and this is more damaging if they have requested some additional pre-sales information and don't receive any notification in the next 1 hour. In this Internet world, your competitor is just a click away. Your customer goes back to the search results and clicks the next website that gives a similar product. Lost sales, and more money in your competitor's hands! This is twice the loss as the competitor is going to spend a percentage of the money in advertising the product or building a better product. Auto responders help reduce this possibility by carefully scripting the follow up messages based on the incoming queries your pre-sales information can be safely and securely delivered without delays. This translates into better sales.
Nine Things To Know Before Selecting The Web Host For Your Business
It may seem simple yet it is often times overlooked. When it comes to choosing the right Internet hosting provider for their websites, the majority of business owners or companies know very little about making the best Internet/web hosting decisions.
The Perfect Support
Hosting Support ? An Introduction
Web Hosting: Which Is The Host With The Most?
So you want to publish a web site do you? Welcome to the club. These days it seems that almost everyone has a web site of some kind, and thousands more continue to be launched every day. It's challenging enough to design a site and fill it with interesting content, but when all is said and done another challenge still remains - where to host it?
Beware of the Hidden Perils of Low Cost Hosting
Some folks classify low cost web hosting on the same level as free web hosting and while this may seem a little harsh, there are certain factors one needs to be very careful about when going for low cost web hosts.
Dedicated Server Price Check
The price of dedicated hosting services has really come down in the past couple of years. In fact, prices have dropped so much for the "budget dedicated server" market. While competitive conditions in both the hosting industry and the computer hardware industry have contributed to the reduction in dedicated hosting costs, don't think that prices were that inflated in the first place. Budget servers are fantastic but it takes more than a competitive market to offer services at such great prices. Much thanks to the great overbuilds of networks, data centers and computer hardware in the dot-com days, companies with a bit of buying power can acquire the hard-resources it takes to provide a good quality un-managed dedicated server for a great price. Finding a dedicated server for $199 a month or less these days is not that difficult. When shopping for your dedicated server, consider more than just price. Managed Services Before just lining up the amount of ram, the processor speed, the data transfer and the price ask yourself - what else can this company do for me that I need now, or may need down the road. While there are plenty that do it, a 1 person effort to maintain a mission critical or high traffic server is no easy task. It helps to have others helping look out for your interests as well. Check to see if your host provides managed services such as backups, monitoring, firewalls and intrusion detection. Sometime they may be included in the plan but nearly always can be negotiated in at a reasonable price and can be well worth the investment. Technical Support The level of support received with your dedicated services is important as well. Some dedicated hosts offer email only support in order to keep costs down while others flat out charge a fee for a support ticket. Your preferred method of receiving support plus the level and frequency in which you will need it should certainly be considered. The Quality of Your Network Most dedicated hosting providers these days have pretty substantial internet connectivity. Nonetheless, it is something you should be aware of. Look for a host that has redundant connectivity via multiple providers insuring as much connectivity uptime as possible. Some of the major connectivity providers these days are Sprint, UUNet, Savvis, AT&T, Qwest and Cogent. Summary A very cheap server deal does not simply mean you are dealing with an overly generous hosting company or that another provider is ripping you off at a higher rate. While some hosts do price more competitively than others, there are associates costs that must be covered. When shopping for your next dedicated server just keeps in mind you may not always be comparing apples to apples. Please refer following web sites for useful resources related to web site hosting: http://www.vipwh.com http://www.thehostingguide.com
The Big Secret of Fabulous and Mediocre Web Site Hosting Companies
Most web site hosting services like the one you're probably using right now, provide you with space on which you can host your web site. These mediocre web site hosting companies will even help you set up your own email addresses and provide you with the ability to run your own scripts and programs.
Shared Web Hosting Service Explained!
The next concern for you after designing and developing web pages is to get your web site hosted on the Internet. But with so many web hosting companies offering various types of web hosting packages ? shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting, managed web hosting, which type of hosting should you choose?
CHMOD - Undertanding File Permissions on a Unix-Based Server
The basic command for changing file permissions in unix based operating systems is the 'chmod' command. This command is executed with a set of parameters after it. With most FTP clients, you can simply select the filename you want to change the permissions of, right click, and choose the chmod command.
Server Host: Where Does My Web Page Go?
For those of you who don't really understand where or how your web page is sitting on your hosting sever, this is a basic over view of how it works.
Switching Web Host
Moving a web site to a new host is not as difficult as you may think. If you follow the tips below carefully you should be fine and have your site up in no time at all.
The ?Website? CHECKLIST : Domains, Hosting, Web Design
This article is meant to all who already have a website or who propose to buy it. Website ? the term comprises three things : Domain, Hosting (Web space) & Web Design
How to Choose a Web Hosting Company?
Nowadays, anybody can afford to order a feature-packed web hosting plan for next to nothing; however, affordable price is not the only criterion which should be considered when purchasing web hosting services. In this article, I'll explain the basics of what you should look for in choosing a web hosting company, not just concentrating on the best price and features, but also on reliability and honesty. You're investing your money and effort into finding paying customers and you wouldn't like to lose them in order to save a few dollars per month on a web hosting service.
How to Choose the Web Hosting Provider?
1. Does the company offer telephone support or 24/7 email support?
Choosing The Wrong Server Will Literally Make Or Break You
Choosing the right web server will be one of the most important decisions you will ever make with your online business. Why? Because the web server you choose will literally make or break your online business.
Back To School Web Hosting
Every year as school starts web hosts see an up tick in orders as entrepreneurs and stay at home parents have more free time and the vacation summer season winds down to the shorter days of winter. Many hosting companies plan special fall campaigns designed for these small business startups. But lately there has been another wave around this time of year and it comes as specialized hosting packages for students and parents. Increasingly we are seeing websites for bloggers, online photos, resumes, family forums, podcasting, and web cams. This variety of new technologies has spawned a larger need for web hosting. Someone has to host all of this content and information. And in some cases like web cameras, photos, and podcasting the hosting needs are pretty large.
Free Or Not Free -- Its Your Choice
The internet is one of the world's top sources of information, products and just about anything else you could possibly want. And, if you have spent any amount of time online, you must have noticed that much of it is free.
Importance of Educated Choice While Choosing A Web Hosting Provider
There are many attributes that makes a web hosting provider stand out from the crowd. But in this current highly competitive world the providers have become so adept in posing as the best out there that it becomes very difficult to choose the best for your business. Now it is the "knowledge" about what factors to consider becomes a must have, for your business. This is not an article about the factors themselves to consider but this makes the point for the need to have this knowledge and how to acquire this knowledge. In the services industry knowledge is almost everything. The knowledge about the technology behind the service, knowledge about the folks behind the service, knowledge of the customer service, quality of the hosting available and many more to list here. When you begin your search the first and foremost to decide is the budget allocation for the hosting. This may sound as something to decide at the end of the cycle, but it is important even before you acquire knowledge of the factors to consider. Let me put forward a small example if the budget you can allocate is less then 100$ then you ignore terms like dedicated servers collocation, etc. The more your budget the more you have to learn.
Web Hosting Woes for Beginners
Every individual when it starts surfing the net for choosing its hosting partner get confused by variety of offers. Most of the beginners usually fall into trap of free hosting, cheaper hosting and other stuff that lead them to land in no man's land later on. All there efforts and time goes in vein and he has a nightmare to restart working on things again. There is no doubt that every one out there on internet look for cheap or free hosting, it is very much important to make decisions thinking of long term prospects. Here are some reasons why:
A Simple Guide to Web Hosting
Personal Computers, Servers Or ISP?