A-Z of Web Hosting

Initial Summary

If you want to do a business, there is a high chance that you will find competition. In order to beat the competition, you need to take advantages of online world. So you need to have a business web site by which you can get customers. In order to make web site, you need to have web space. Basically web space is a space where your web site’s HTML/PHP pages are located. This web space is provided by web hosting companies.

Free Hosting Service – Benefits & Limitations

Many hosting service providers provide free web hosting service. So they are not charging a dime to you. These free web hosting service providers make money by placing ads on your web site. There are also many technical limitations in free web hosting. Free web hosting is not recommended for professional sites. You can use free hosting for hosting your personal web sites.

Shared & Dedicated Web Hosting

There are many kind of paid hosting but two kinds are very famous. 1) Shared hosting & 2) Dedicated server hosting. In shared web hosting, your server resources are shared among many sites. So it’s called shared web hosting. In dedicated web hosting, you get the one separate server for your hosting. Dedicated web hosting services are more costly than shared hosting.

Factors to Consider

There are some basic components of web hosting. You should look at those components at the time of purchasing. In other words, you can say them features. These components includes web hosting space, bandwidth, domains hosting, FTP & SSH support, PHP support, reliability, customer support & price.

What is Web Space & Bandwidth

Web hosting space is provided in unit of bytes. Most of hosting providers provide Giga Bytes(GB) of space. Some web hosting services even provide unlimited web space. If the web site is very big then it requires Giga bytes of space. Most web sites fit in 3 GB of space. Bandwidth is a measure of data transfer. Now a days, web hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth.

Unlimited Domains Hosting – An Useful feature

Many web hosting providers provide unlimited domain hosting. It means you can host as many websites as you like. Some service plans have limited domain hosting. You can select your service provider based on your requirement.

File Transfer Protocol & Secure Shall

When you subscribe to an web hosting account, you get an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access. FTP is used to upload your web site pages to the server. SSH (Secure Shall) is a protocol which you use to login to your server. After logging in to your server, you can directly edit, delete or create a new file. Only few web hosting providers give you SSH access.

Dynamic Pages & PHP Support

Another common feature is a PHP support. Your web hosting server need to provide PHP server side support. You can make many dynamic pages using PHP support. PHP support is must for any web site in today’s world. There are also few extensions which should be available in PHP support. Some web hosts give access to make changes in the PHP extensions. Although as an ordinary user, you don’t need to change any PHP extension setting.

Reliability and Uptime

You need to decide also the reliability of the server. This is measured in uptime and the response time of the server. Web host should provide quick response time of the page requested on your web site. Also the uptime should be higher than 99.9%. If you are getting less up time than 98% then you need to change your web host.

Customer Support – Phone & Email Support

Customer support is also an important factor to consider. You need to have good customer service to generate good user experience. All web hosts provide 24×7 supports by email. Some do provide instant online support and only few provide phone support. Support is also an important factor while purchasing hosting service.

Cost of Web Hosting

Price or cost is very important factor while choosing web hosting service provider. Most shared hosting service provider offer unlimited data transfer and unlimited space for $5-$10/month. You can use coupons to save money. Most of service providers offer coupons.

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