Definition of Web Hosting

You have a notion that you want to turn into a website? Your first step should be to sustain your enthusiasm and find a place for your site on the web so that it will be constantly accessible to the whole world.

Where should you host your website?

Since the number of web sites on the web has increased rapidly during the last several years, the need for web hosting services has also lead to the birth of countless web hosting companies. These are firms that offer you storage space for your own web page on their servers.

Types of hosting services

The ambit of web hosting services fluctuates vastly, so do the demands of the web page owners. The most basic type of web hosting is the small-scale file hosting solution, where files can be uploaded using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a web-based Control Panel. Lots of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide this service for free. Personal web page owners and corporations can also get hosting services from various hosting providers. Personal website hosting services are usually either free, advertisement-financed, or reasonably priced. Business website hosting services often are more expensive, but due to the huge competition on the marketplace, an increasing number of web hosting vendors, like us at IGMB Host, distribute business website hosting services at affordable prices and with flexible invoicing cycles.

Types of web sites and their requirements

The free website hosting solution is normally sufficient for personal websites such as portfolios or online blogs. A larger website, like a social network or a corporate website, requires a more powerful website hosting package that provides database support and web application development platforms (for example PHP). If you want to set up a web shop, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) must be supported by the hosting packages provider of your choice. Today, Secure Sockets Layer certificates are supplied by the majority of web hosting firms.

The hosting Control Panel

The hosting solutions provider typically also offers a hosting Control Panel tool for handling your web site files, e-mail addresses, mail aliases, domain names, DNS records, etc.

Service dependability

When choosing a hosting accounts provider, website accessibility is a very important aspect. The availability of a web site is measured on an annual basis by taking into consideration the time when the web site is publicly available and discoverable on the web. Network and service availability guarantees, therefore, should be attentively taken into consideration when ordering a website hosting package. The best thing to do is double-check the service-level agreements and the Terms of Service of the web hosting packages provider of your choice in advance. Finding reviews from existing customers is also a rather good step before you decide to register.

The shared web hosting solution

The most famous and inexpensive type of web hosting service is the shared hosting solution. It includes 24x7x365 support, which is a huge upside for customers who do not wish to cope with server maintenance procedures, but could also impede users who want to have more control over the web server. For such clients, a virtual private servers or a dedicated hosting would be more appropriate. Most standard applications and scripts work okay on a shared hosting server. Moreover, the shared web hosting solution costs less than other types of web hosting solutions, such as the dedicated hosting, since the hosting plans provider divides the shared server among numerous customers. The shared web hosting platform usually involves system resource usage limits that guarantee that the separate users do not interfere with each other and that the shared hosting web server remains stable.

Managing your shared web hosting account

Shared website hosting packages usually offer a web-based hosting Control Panel graphical user interface, such as cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, etc. Most of the large web hosting distributors, again like us at IGMB Host, avail of their own custom-built Control Panel interface.

Web server maintenance

With the shared web hosting platform, the web hosting accounts provider is responsible for managing the web and email servers, for installing web server software, software updates and patches, and for offering technical support to its customers. Most servers are based on the Linux Operating System. The web hosting vendor's system administrators are responsible for maintaining the OS up to date, unless you have a dedicated server and full root access.