Description of Shared Web Hosting
Shared web hosting is a service that web hosting suppliers provide so that you can publish your website online.
How can people find your web site?
When you develop a site and you want other individuals to see it, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a hosting server. If you attempt to make the site available on the Internet by shared web hosting it on your own computer, there is no way for you to keep it constantly online, which is why website hosting services exist.
How does shared web hosting work?
Hosting corporations offer you disk space for your web site on their high-powered computers (servers) and ensure continuous Internet access. When someone types your website address (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the server where they can have a peek at the content of your web site.
Web hosting types
With the advance of Internet technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to answer the various demands of website proprietors, among them shared website hosting services, VPS hosting services and dedicated web hosting services.
Shared website hosting
Shared hosting is the most common form of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where one single web hosting server is shared between a lot of web hosting users who are limited by the CPU, bandwidth and disk space quotas that they have been allotted. This type of website hosting is generally cheaper - you don't have to pay for the whole hosting server in advance, since it is divided among lots of hosting clients, and the web hosting distributor can afford to provide much more affordable prices. It is also easier to use - the web server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the web hosting provider takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates for you.
The setback of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the server's resources with other users and if one site becomes really popular it may affect (and slow down) all the other web sites on that server, but most hosting vendors, including us at , have security systems at work that impede that from happening.
A definition of a website hosting service
Because shared website hosting is the most widely used form of web hosting, the majority of web hosting providers and web hosting users simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is a huge competition on the website hosting market, the majority of web hosting firms endeavor to offer low prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for example, offer different website hosting plans and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your resources. If you choose the annual billing cycle, you will get a bonus - one free-of-charge domain name registration.
VPS web hosting
VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your web site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared web hosting plan, a private virtual server package is a good option. VPS server web hosting clients still share the hardware resources of the physical machine with other virtual private web server hosting account holders, but the hard disk space is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like a real dedicated server. The upside is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a Virtual Private Server are not shared. In addition, the virtualization technology offers you much more freedom to configure your virtual private web hosting server, but it also presupposes a more advanced degree of technical expertise.
Dedicated Server Web Hosting
With the Dedicated Server Web Hosting solution, the customer obtains a whole web hosting server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated server hosting solution is the most flexible of all website hosting solutions and offers multiple customization options - the dedicated hosting users can pick the hardware and software specs that will answer their needs. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated server web hosting plan is an excellent option for a frequently visited business website, for example - you will not share the dedicated web hosting server's resources with anyone else and will be given complete root access. You will have complete control over the web server, which will allow you to implement any configuration changes that you might need. The weak side of the dedicated web server hosting solution is that a higher degree of technical expertise is needed - unless you engage an IT pro, it will be your duty to manage and configure the dedicated server. The dedicated hosting solution is also far more costly, since the cost of the dedicated web server isn't shared among any other users.
A web hosting tip for beginners
If you are just starting to develop your web site and are seeking a hosting solution to start with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most sensible choice. If your website outgrows your shared website hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your website files, because only the parameters of your account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting plan to a more advanced one at any given moment without having to worry about the number of days remaining before expiration. Besides, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared website hosting plan and still need more system resources (which is great sometimes - it means that your web site's popularity has expanded!), there always is the possibility to migrate to a private virtual server hosting solution or a dedicated web hosting solution without having to swap hosting providers.