By Erica Whatley


The internet has been part and parcel of our daily lives in such a way that if you take it away, our world would grind into a halt and become a lame one. There are millions of websites driving the internet, from social media sites to entirely business related ones. Given such a scenario, "website hosting" has become a relatively common term. But what exactly is website hosting?


Website hosting generally means storing and publishing information pages at a space provided by a website hosting provider from where people can access those pages via the World Wide Web. There are a lot of website hosting options available in the market today. There are free website hosting plans which have sponsored advertisements on the hosted web pages. There are others who offer their services at a very minimal fee but still retain all the perks that you may be after. There are servers who offer enterprise level premium fee based web hosting plans which are typically used by businesses and organizations.

There are scores of website hosting options, plans or packages that are out in the market today. There are free website hosting plans which are suited for individuals or for new businesses with a small budget for their presence in the internet. There are others who offer their services at a very affordable cost while retaining all the features that you may need. These are called paid website hosting which is great for established businesses or organizations, and provides more storage and features for the hosted website.

The next step would be choosing the appropriate hosting type. There are several types of hosting which include shared hosting, a dedicated server, and collocation or virtual private web server. For newbies, shared website hosting is the best option. This type involves many users who are using the same web server and share the server resources. A dedicated server is owned by a single user and is accorded complete rights over it. With this type, you can install your own software, use your own programming language, and as the name suggests, it is entirely dedicated for your website/s specifications. Dedicated servers will be useful for enterprise-level sites, dedicated hosting resellers, web designers and developers, corporate intranets, intricate sites with high traffic and secured information, and for sites with restricted content. However, dedicated servers will cost you 8 to 10 times more than the average web hosts. If you cannot afford the expenses of a dedicated server, then a virtual private server is the likely solution. Collocation is best suited for websites that require advanced functions such as custom software and hardware configurations, load-balancing and clustering.

The next stage would be picking the appropriate hosting type. There are many types of hosting, among which are shared hosting, virtual private web server, and a dedicated server. Shared website hosting accommodates multiple websites on a single server by allocating each site its own portion of server space. Almost all web hosting companies today provide shared web hosting feature to their clients. Shared hosting is also called virtual hosting, its is appropriate for low budget and entry-level hosting services. It can provide adequate disk space and bandwidth for most personal or small-business websites. A virtual private server (VPS), also known as collocation is best suited for websites that require advanced functions such as load-balancing and clustering, custom software, and hardware configurations. A dedicated server is owned by a single user and is accorded complete rights over it. This means your website does not share storage space on a server with any other client. Your site has private access to the server it's hosted on. Dedicated server is the best option if you have a busy or intricate website but you don't want to operate your own server.

This is basically an overview of website hosting. You may need to conduct further research and dig into the core of website hosting so that you can make the right choice as to your host, hosting type, and your hosting plan. Once you become familiar with the entire concept and you become well equipped with its intricacies, then you will realize that website hosting is enjoyable and profitable.




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