Web Hosting Definition

Web hosting is a service that web hosting service providers provide so that you can publish your site on the web.

How can people spot your site?

When you develop a site and you want other persons to access it, you will have to copy (or upload) it to a hosting server. If you attempt to make the site reachable online by web hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it online all the time, which is why website hosting services exist.

How does web hosting work?

Web hosting companies offer you hard drive space for your website on their powerful computers (servers) and ensure continuous Internet connection. When someone types your web site address (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the hosting server where they can have a look at the content of your website.

Web hosting varieties

With the advance of web technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into existence to fulfill the various demands of web site proprietors, including shared web hosting services, Virtual Private Server web hosting services and dedicated server web hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared web hosting is the most common type of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where one server is divided among many shared hosting account owners who are limited by the CPU, bandwidth and web hosting server disk drive space quotas that they have been assigned. This form of hosting is commonly less expensive - you don't have to purchase the whole web hosting server upfront, since it is divided among many hosting customers, and the web hosting solutions provider can afford to offer much more modest prices. It is also easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the hosting company handles all server maintenance tasks and security updates for you.

The weak side of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's system resources with other shared hosting account owners and if a given website becomes very busy it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the sites on that web hosting server, but most web hosting suppliers, including us at WANTOK Web Hosting, have protection systems at work that impede that from happening.

A definition of a website hosting service

Since shared hosting is the most commonly used form of web hosting, most hosting companies and hosting clients simply call it hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive rivalry on the website hosting marketplace, the majority of hosting suppliers try to offer low prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for instance, offer different hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your finances. If you choose the yearly billing cycle, you will receive a present - one charge-free 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 server web hosting solution. If your web site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared website hosting plan, a virtual private web hosting server plan is a good option. Virtual Private Server hosting users still share the hardware resources of the physical machine with other private virtual server hosting account owners, but the hard disk drive is partitioned using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured practically like a real dedicated hosting server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a virtual web server are not shared. Also, the virtualization software gives you much more autonomy to configure your virtual web hosting server, but it also presupposes a higher degree of technical proficiency.

Dedicated Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Web Hosting solution, the client gets an entire server and can use all its resources. The dedicated server web hosting solution is the most reliable of all web hosting solutions and offers multiple configuration options - the dedicated hosting clients can select the hardware and software specs that will fulfill their demands. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are among the reasons why a dedicated hosting server is a perfect choice for a data-heavy business portal, for example - you will not share the hosting server's resources with anyone else and will gain full root-level access. You will exert complete authority over the machine, which will enable you to implement any configuration modifications that you might need. The weak side of the dedicated web server hosting solution is that a more advanced level of technical proficiency is needed - unless you employ an IT expert, it will be your responsibility to administer and configure the physical server. The dedicated web hosting solution is also much more costly, because the cost of the dedicated hosting web server isn't shared among any other users.

A web hosting advice for beginner users

If you are just beginning to set up your site and are looking for a hosting solution to start out with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most relevant choice. If your web site grows beyond your shared hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for example, this is very easy and requires no migration of your files, because only the features of your hosting account change. You can also upgrade your hosting package to a more powerful one at any particular time without worrying about the time left until the expiration date. Also, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared website hosting plan and still need more resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it signifies that your site's popularity has grown!), there always is the possibility to switch to a virtual web hosting server or a dedicated server without having to swap hosting providers.