A Beginner's Guide to Web Hosting

A Beginner's Guide to Web Hosting

By Andrew Webb

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 is the owner of Affordable 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
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Webb

Build Your Own Website And Get Free Traffic

Build Your Own Website And Get Free Traffic
By Mark Shantz

Creating your own site can be a daunting and time consuming task to say the least. Not having advanced techno skills in this area can turn this into a brain curdling experience with no end in site. Some people opt for the free website building programs available on the net, which are a good place to start if you want to learn the basics about web hosting, domain registration, FTP, etc.... However, to build your own Website is a far more satisfying experience which can allow you to express yourself or business in a more original fashion.

The novice web builder now has access to and control over their own content base and format through site building tools that can be used to create search engine friendly web pages. These pages can then be analyzed and optimized very simply by using a site hosting and research company that provides this special service. The pages are then submitted automatically to most of the major search engines for indexing and later, spidering. This can usually take anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to get listed and ranked. However everyone needs to be patient because this is all part of the listing process.

Most marketers know that to receive Free traffic from search engines is to have a site with valuable keyword rich content that is focused and useful. The competition these days is fierce and unrelenting. Competing against the "BIG GUY" with all the tools, resources, money and experience is a challenge that most home based marketers are in and don't even realize it. The structure of your site must be strong, well laid out and easy to navigate. Until lately this was a job for techno wizard man or hired website design specialists. Myself, I have found this process too time consuming and laborious to say the least. Your time should and can be better spent on the real reason that you became a home business entrepreneur, which is marketing your product or service.

Most small business hosting services or providers include very little in the way of tools needed to grow a truly successful full time Internet business. They usually provide an upgrade package and offer lots of third party software solutions and packages. This too can be a time intensive process to follow so one must be careful to weigh their options and investigate several different providers in order to make a decision that is right for your business requirements. There are however, companies that do deliver more, and can help anyone automate these complicated tedious tasks with greater efficiency and less time. The job of creating a great free traffic site by the inexperienced or less knowledgeable marketer is now within your grasp.

A few months ago I wrote an article about web site management that included information about the different web design tools available such as microsoft Front Page and Print Shop etc. These are also great tools that can be used in conjunction with hosting companies or online web design service providers. For more information about a service that over delivers on this topic and how to receive free traffic you can check out my resource box below.
Mark Shantz is a work at home entrepreneur dedicated to the support of people looking for top rated home job business opportunities. He provides time saving tools, resources, and helpful support. To visit an honest friend in the business and receive Free information, courses and downloads go to; http://www.homejobsite.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Shantz