Web Hosting Explanation

Web hosting is a service that hosting suppliers offer so that you can put your web site online.

How can people spot your website?

When you build a website and you wish other persons to see it, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a web server. If you attempt to make the site visible on the web by web hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it up and running all the time, which is why web hosting services came into being.

How does web hosting work?

Hosting suppliers provide you with space for your web site on their powerful computers (hosting servers) and guarantee uninterrupted network uptime. When someone writes your domain (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the web hosting server where they can have a peek at the content of your website.

Web hosting varieties

With the advancement of online technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to meet the different needs of website owners, including shared hosting services, private virtual web server hosting services and dedicated server hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared website hosting is the most common type of hosting, and is also the easiest to begin with. It is a service where a single web hosting server is divided between many clients who are restricted by the CPU, web traffic and disk drive space quotas that they have been allotted. This form of web hosting is commonly cheaper - you don't have to purchase the whole server in advance, since it is shared among many web hosting account holders, and the web hosting distributor can afford to provide much lower prices. It is also easier to use - the web server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the hosting company takes care of all server maintenance tasks and security updates for you.

The downside of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's system resources with other web hosting customers and if a given site becomes really popular it may affect (and slow down) all the other web sites on that server, but most hosting firms, including us at hostleonard, have protection platforms in place that hinder that from happening.

A definition of a web hosting service

Because shared hosting is the most widely used form of web hosting, most web hosting companies and web hosting users simply call it hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive rivalry on the website hosting marketplace, most hosting service providers endeavor to provide affordable prices and bonuses with their web hosting services. We, for instance, offer different website hosting plans and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your resources. If you pick the yearly billing cycle, you will obtain a bonus - one free-of-charge domain name registration.

VPS web hosting

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

Dedicated Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Web Hosting solution, the customer gets a whole dedicated web hosting server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most reliable of all web hosting solutions and offers multiple configuration possibilities - the dedicated server web hosting users can choose the hardware and software specifications that will fulfill their needs. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are among the reasons why a dedicated server web hosting package is an excellent choice for a high-traffic corporate web site, for example - you will not share the dedicated server's resources with anyone else and will gain full root privileges. You will exert full control over the hosting server, which will enable you to make any server configuration modifications that you might require. The setback of the dedicated hosting solution is that a higher degree of technical proficiency is required - unless you employ an IT expert, it will be your obligation to administer and configure the physical server. The dedicated server hosting solution is also far more costly, since the cost of the physical server isn't shared between any other clients.

A website hosting advice for novices

If you are just beginning to create your website and are seeking a web hosting solution to start with, the shared website hosting solution persists to be the most sensible option. If your web site grows beyond your shared website hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your web site files, because only the parameters of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your hosting plan to a more advanced one at any given time without having to worry about the number of days left until the expiration date. Besides, if you finally reach the most advanced shared website hosting package and still require more system resources (which is great sometimes - it implies that your website's popularity has grown!), there always is the option to migrate to a VPS web server hosting solution or a dedicated server hosting platform without the need to swap hosting service providers.