|
WEB SERVERS
AND WEB HOSTING
So you’re looking to learn about web
hosting and what it has to offer or you
may not know much about web hosting?
There is no shame in not knowing this
information. Everyone has to start at
the beginning at some point. On that
note, lets begin learning about web
hosting.
First off, what is web hosting and
how does it work?
Web hosting is the business practice
of providing space and bandwidth on a
high-powered computer server that is
connected to the Internet at very high
speeds. Hosting companies maintain large
networks of high-powered web server
computers in a physical location known
as a data center. These computer servers
are connected to a very fast, and
generally redundant, Internet
connection. The data centers have
primary and backup power, a fast
connection to the Internet, and a
security monitoring staff.
The web hosting companies provide a
share of disk space and available
bandwidth to a customer for a monthly
fee. Once the customer is signed up,
they can upload files to their personal
space on the web server and the
information is then viewable to anyone
interested on the Internet. The monthly
fee the web hosting company charges is
much less than what it would cost to run
a server out of your own home or data
center. This is the reason these
companies exist. They take care of all
the hardware, software, and other
technical needs for you.
Types of web hosting
There are many different types of web
hosting offers, but the main three are
shared, reseller, and dedicated. Each
type of hosting is for a different
purpose.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared web hosting is the most
popular form of hosting. Shared hosting
is a portion of disk space and bandwidth
provided to you by the web hosting
company on a high-powered server. There
are many other web sites hosted on this
server, and the hosting company is
likely to have quite a few of these
servers in a large data center. The
resources of the server are shared by as
many other websites as are allocated to
that computer.
Shared web hosting is the best form
of web hosting if you are looking for a
great price and don’t have more than a
couple thousand daily visitors to your
site.
Reseller Web Hosting
Reseller web hosting is a popular,
low-cost solution to starting your own
web hosting business. There are two
types of reseller hosting, private-label
and a reseller of services.
The private-label is the best type of
reseller plan because it allows you to
retain full control over your customer’s
websites. A private-label plan allows
the reseller to keep the full monthly
payment of the web-hosting customer, but
the reseller must pay a monthly fee to
the larger hosting company for the
reseller space. The more hosting
accounts a private-label reseller can
sell, the higher the profit for them.
Private-label hosting allows you to host
many more websites than if you were
using shared hosting for each. This is a
great solution for someone who has many
sites they need to host in one location
to save money.
The reseller of services plans resell
the regular web hosting plans of a
larger web hosting company, but you get
a discounted price for providing the
customer and earn a monthly fee for as
long as they remain a customer. This
plan does not allow control over
customer web sites and you only keep a
portion of the potentially monthly
revenue.
Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated web hosting is the most
powerful and cost effective solution of
hosting a busy web site without
resorting to buying your own equipment
and paying hundreds of dollars per month
for a fast Internet connection.
Dedicated hosting consists of single
server with no one else hosting on that
computer. This allows for the greatest
of configuration options. Anyone who has
a busy website will find dedicated
hosting is the necessary choice.
Web Hosting Considerations
Wondering about all the other
information listed in web hosting plans?
In this section, I will explain the most
important considerations in choosing a
good web host.
Price
The price of web hosting services is
one of the most important. There are
many hosting companies out there with
cheap hosting packages, but they may be
lacking in other areas. Don’t let the
price of a hosting package fool you.
There are some hosting companies out
there who have great prices and the
other features are just as good. Price
may be one of the most important
decisions of a web hosting plan, but
there is much more to consider in
choosing a quality web host.
Disk Space / Storage Space
Disk space is the amount of physical
storage space a web host gives to you to
store your web files. Hosting companies
these days have plans with disk space
being measured mostly in terms of
gigabytes, but some are still offering
plans in the megabytes for storage
space. Depending on your needs for file
storage space, you may need more or
less. Generally the more disk space
offered, the better.
Bandwidth / Data Transfer
The amount of bandwidth available can
make a big difference in choosing a
quality hosting plan. In general, the
more bandwidth a hosting company makes
available to you, the better. This means
you can support more traffic to your web
site as your business grows. Be wary of
web hosting companies that offer
unlimited or unmetered bandwidth. While
many of these are legitimate offers,
there are some out there who are
overselling their bandwidth in hopes the
average user won’t use much.
Customer Support
In any business, it is very important
to provide exception customer service.
Web hosting is no exception to this.
Many of the hosting companies are
available all day and night in case you
have a problem with your web site, but
there are some who are just available
specific hours of the day. If your web
site goes down in the middle of the
night when they’re not available, this
means lost revenue for a business. You
should make sure the web host you select
is always available for support.
Money Back Guarantee
Most web hosting companies will
provide a thirty-day money back
guarantee. Some will provide one even
long, but be wary of the ones who offer
no money back guarantee. I would not
purchase web hosting services from a
company who does not offer at least a 30
day money back guarantee, unless they
have proven themselves to be a leader in
the industry and have an excellent
reputation.
Operating System
An operating system is a piece of
software that controls the interaction
between the computer user and the
physical hardware of the machine. A vast
majority of all web sites on the
Internet run on the Linux operation
system. Linux is generally much more
stable than Windows. Stability is
critical in running a web site. For this
reason, I prefer to host my web sites on
the Linux operating system. Some sites
have specific requirements that only the
Windows operating system can satisfy,
but there are always alternatives to
those requirements.
Backup
A good web hosting company will have
a regular schedule to backup the data on
all the web servers. The more often the
data is backed up, the better. At the
very least, a web hosting company should
backup web site files daily.
Control Panel
The control panel is the point of
contact the web site administrator will
have between the host server and their
own machine connected via the Internet.
It is essential to have a well organized
and easy to use control panel interface.
My favorite control panel is cPanel,
which is one of the leading web hosting
control panels out there today. Plesk is
another good one, and many companies
will create their own control panel for
you to use. Most web hosting companies
will provide a link to a demo of the
control panel they use with their
hosting plans. The control panel used is
a matter of preference, but it should be
user friendly.
Email
Email is essential part of
communication on the Internet. Most web
hosting companies out there will give
you more email addresses and more space
to hold email messages than you will
ever need. What you need to watch out
for is the companies that have decided
to be a little strict on their email
accounts and only offer a small number
or a small amount of message space.
Uptime
Uptime is a term used to describe how
often the average web site hosted by a
company is available online. No company
should be expected to provide an exact
100% uptime. This is impossible due to
things such as hardware, software, and
power failures. A vast majority of the
companies are very good with uptime, and
they guarantee it. It is still a good
idea to be conscious of the uptimes
posted by the company. If it is not at
least 99.5%, it is probably not worth
hosting with that company.
Statistics
As a webmaster, it is nice to know
how many visitors you’ve had, where they
came from, how long they stay on your
site, and how much bandwidth they’ve
used. This information is collected by
the web server and is placed in a log
file. A statistics software package can
read this data and provide meaningful
information to the webmaster. The
information gathered from these logs can
be very valuable in improved services to
the viewers of the web site.
FTP
FTP stands for file transfer
protocol. It is a way of quickly
uploading or downloading many files to
and from a web server. Most web hosting
companies will allow their customers
access to their web hosting accounts via
FTP. FTP is very useful and is a great
feature to have when paying for a web
hosting account.
Scripting
Since the World Wide Web began, many
scripting languages have been created
and have evolved into the dynamic and
interactive environment we enjoy today.
A scripting language is a way of adding
functionality to a web site, whether it
be to calculate numbers or to load
information from an external database.
Scripting languages have made electronic
commerce possible. Some of these
languages include PHP, ASP, JSP,
Coldfusion, VBscript, Javascript, and
Perl. I won’t go into the details of
these in this article for the sake of
complexity. If you know how to use these
languages, you should know what to look
for in a web server for them.
Databases
A database is a place to store data
that can be used in a large variety of
ways. Databases are used on the Internet
for applications such as shopping carts,
message boards, and product catalogues.
The more databases the web hosting
provider allows you to create, the most
applications you can deploy on your web
server. Databases are used by the more
advanced web master, but information is
freely available online should you be
interested.
Conclusions
Web hosting can be a very difficult
decision with the many thousands of
hosting companies out there. It is
critical to find a plan that fits your
needs and to have a good hosting
company. I hope this article was useful
in making your decision about which
company to host with. Happy Hosting!
http://www.justvb.net/it/ |