Web Hosting Uncovered

Web hosting is a service that hosting companies offer so that you can publish your site on the Internet.

How can people open your web site?

When you create a web site and you want other people to notice it, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a server. If you attempt to make the web site discoverable on the World Wide Web by web hosting it on your own computer, there is no way for you to keep it always up and running, which is why website hosting services came into existence.

How does web hosting work?

Hosting service providers provide you with hard drive space for your site on their high-end computers (web hosting servers) and ensure constant website availability. When somebody types your URL (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the web hosting server where they can take a glimpse at the content of your web site.

Hosting varieties

With the advancement of online technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to meet the various needs of website possessors, among them shared website hosting services, virtual web server hosting services and dedicated hosting services.

Shared hosting

Shared web hosting is the most popular form of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where one web server is shared between lots of hosting account owners who are restricted by the CPU, traffic and storage space quotas that they have been apportioned. This type of website hosting is commonly less expensive - you don't need to purchase the whole server upfront, since it is shared between lots of web hosting clients, and the hosting provider can afford to offer much more modest prices. It is also much easier to use - the hosting server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the web hosting distributor takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates on your behalf.

The weak side of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's system resources with other web hosting account holders and if a given site becomes very popular it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the sites on that hosting server, but most hosting distributors, including us at The Blog Host, have security platforms in place that obstruct that from occurring.

A description of a website hosting service

Since shared hosting is the most widely used form of web hosting, the majority of hosting vendors and hosting customers simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. As there is a large competition on the hosting market, the majority of web hosting distributors strive to offer reasonable prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for example, provide different hosting plans and two invoicing options - monthly and annual, depending on your budget. If you choose the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a bonus - one free-of-cost domain name registration.

VPS packages

VPS is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your website outgrows the resources offered by your shared hosting account, a VPS server plan is a suitable option. virtual private web server hosting customers still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other private virtual web server hosting account owners, but the physical machine is partitioned using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated web hosting server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a virtual hosting server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization technology gives you much more freedom to configure your server, but it also calls for a more advanced degree of technical know-how.

Dedicated Hosting

With the Dedicated Hosting solution, the user gets a whole hosting server and can use all its resources. The dedicated web server hosting solution is the most robust of all website hosting solutions and offers lots of configuration options - the customers can select the hardware and software specifications that will satisfy their needs. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are among the reasons why a dedicated web server hosting plan is an excellent option for a high-traffic corporate website, for example - you will not share the web hosting server's resources with anyone else and will acquire root privileges. You will exercise complete authority over the physical server, which will enable you to make any configuration modifications that you might need. The weakness of the dedicated server hosting solution is that a more advanced level of technical knowledge is required - unless you engage an IT pro, you will be responsible for administering and configuring the dedicated hosting server. The dedicated hosting solution is also far more high-priced, since the cost of the physical machine isn't shared among any other customers.

A web hosting tip for beginner users

If you are just starting to build your site and need a hosting solution to start with, the shared hosting solution remains the most appropriate choice. If your site grows beyond your shared hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for example, this is very easy and requires no migration of your files, because only the parameters of your hosting account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting plan to a more advanced one at any particular time without worrying about the remaining time until expiration. In addition, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared web hosting package and still need more system resources (which is great sometimes - it signifies that your web site's popularity has grown!), there always is the option to switch to a VPS hosting server or a dedicated web server without having to switch web hosting service providers.