As soon as one decides to have a website either a simple or an e-commerce site, he/she needs to handle the design of the web site in the best possible way. In addition it is also required that a user should purchase a domain name for it. It will be impossible for a visitor to visit one’s web site if his/her web site is not accessible through the web that can only be possible through a server. The role of a server is that it maintains a permanent connection with the web and then all the information about one’s website will stored on the server. Now visitors will come onto the server and will access his/her website and when they shift to another website they will access information from another server. The concerned point for the user is to look out for the server he/she requires.

Virtual web hosting will be the right option for an individual user or a small e-commerce user. The one who wants to acquire a huge and very costly piece of hardware that will be used for his/her website only then he/she should go for having a dedicated server. A Virtual web hosting is basically hiring a small piece of someone else’s server. Virtual web hosting can also be termed as shared hosting as in this case different sites are all located on a single server. Virtual web hosting is far more economical than owning, maintaining and managing one’s own server. Virtual web hosting is not only used due to its economical character but also there are number of other reasons to use it.

Advantages of Virtual web hosting.

The foremost reason for using virtual web hosting is downtime. Generally running a server is rather far more difficult than running one’s own personal computer. One definitely requires the best technological advancements. He/she should definitely look at the usage spikes and also should try to manage sufficient bandwidth access. Generally a server is hardware having a regular contact with the Internet enabling people to access one’s site. One should manage all of the aspects of a server, in order to make certain that the individuals are able to access his/her website at any time.

Thus the virtual web hosting industry has succeeded. The individuals, who don’t have any experience of Internet hosting, or of web designing, it is advisable for them to set up their account with a virtual web hosting company. The facility of one stop shopping services such as email forwarding, data transfer, backup services for one’s website in case of a crash, technical support and also he/she by him/her self set email addresses particularly for his/her own website.

All these features that are discussed above are eventually designed for one function that is to compose the procedure of putting up and managing a website. The other option available would be to appoint full time staff to maintain hosting which is quite expensive hence rather impossible. The effortlessness usage and the affordability of virtual web hosting have connected the power of economic alliance to offer individuals and company a practical way to get and keep their site on the web.



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First of all, the question arises, WHAT ARE WEB HOSTS? They are the service provider companies that give place to the net users on their servers that provide space on their servers for internet users. Web hosts provide online systems for internet connectivity and for storing information, image mediums and other internet content to their users. If a company wants web as a medium of conducting business, then selection of web host is a crucial step in any internet marketing strategy.

The user can get various kinds of web hosting services from the market. They are broadly divided and described below:

Free Hosting: Least expensive, however, very restricted when one talk about services and space; though one can began with a free web host when the person is an individual professional or obtained a small business to begun with. For a company looking for rapid growth, boundations like restrictions on advertising, bandwidth and permissible edit sites, can adversely effect.

Shared Hosting: Here the user’s site is placed in the company of several other sites (estimating about hundred), centralized on the same server. However, they give more liberties as compare to free hosts.

Reseller Hosting: Hosting providing the facility of an ample amount of bandwidth and space to an e-business on its account and split the space as per requirement. This is however similar as compare to a shared hosting due to the reason that user’s server is located on the same server related to others. However the user possesses the right to judge about the number of divisions and along with whom he/she has to share.

Hosting Choices providing liberty

One can find total resemblance in the inferences of dedicated hosting and Virtual Private Server. A dedicated hosting however demands more money for its service but the user can enjoy several features in comparison to other hostings discussed earlier. With dedicated hosting, the user not only gets his/her own server but can also indulge in services without many restrictions.

With the help of Virtual private server technology a server gets the potential to host numerous virtual environments. Such environments possess the features of individual stand-alone servers. Though, the inferences are the same, still, a virtual private server hosting is cheaper as compared to others. Along with Collocated hosting, the user can install own server at the data center of the host. For the cost of services generally related to other types of hosting, has to be paid by the user of collocated hosting, making this option quite expensive.

It is obligatory that the user should have an existing website, if he/she wishes to acquire a web-hosting service. Thus after the development of website, the next very important thing would be the selection of web hosting service for the website. Thus one should act very careful while selecting a web hosting service for his/her business.



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How does one select a web host for his/her business?

Is it by: – Searching online? Or Printed advert? Or Word of mouth? Or online advert?

A well-designed site generates business through sales leads both online and offline, so business people usually invest in a website. Having one’s website provides him/her with constant web traffic between him and his/her SEO company. Having his/her website visible online all of the time, is between him and his/her web-hosting company.

A key component of any business strategy is providing one’s web site with a stable hosting platform to operate on. One’s business will suffer, as potential traffic would be denied to him/her through down time, without a suitable web-hosting provider. As reputation is everything in business, inaccessibility errors will spoil one’s presence online.

Searching for a good web host is important. Only fractions of the potential hosting suppliers are available online. Three key components of a hosting company are-

Reliability

Reliability is anyone’s biggest concern, so choosing a company providing a reliable web hosting service is very important. One wants all individual potential customers to get to his/her web site so he/she should look for a web host, providing a high percentage of up time.

Support

Support is another important factor for anyone’s business in web hosting. 24/7 support by phone and email is very important. One ought to know that any problem experienced by him/her or his/her hosting company has to be solved quickly. So, one should ignore web host not meeting these criteria.

Web Hosting Package (hosting space, bandwidth, domain name, email accounts etc.)

One need to pay more attention to the minute details as web hosting packages look very alike these days, which means that one should make a few observations since he/she is looking for a web host. One should note down what he/she wants to include in his/her website for e.g. Articles, Images, Music, Shopping cart etc.

One should think of what he/she wants his/her site to be able to do. Its time to go for shopping, once he/she have put together a list of his/her needs. One can compare several web hosting providers before choosing one. One can find huge number of different web hosting providers including dedicated managed hosting on the internet. Many hosts also provide special offer, so one should check them out and save his/her money.



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Everything seems so confusing when one makes a start to acquire a site on internet.

The obtuse acronyms and definitions that flow freely through the ‘Beginner Friendly’ information sites may at times become hard to come across. The principal reason behind this is the Internet and also the simplicity of the process of getting a website online, and people hardly think of the difficulty they once had after getting past the first stumbling steps, as a result of which they are unable to understand the next wave of dot com newbie’s

So we begin by defining some of the basic terms that are seen commonly when we start looking for a web host. One will promptly realize that computer geeks are fond of using big words for simple concepts. What else can one expect from a group of people who decided to quote half a Byte as a Nibble?

Web Host: These are the people who provide a website which can be accessed .These people are a good treasure of information, it proves to be quite worthy to get ones queries answered by contacting their tech support. This fact makes it important to contact them BEFORE one sign’s up for any packages to guarantee reception of a timely response. One can try sending an email their way and see the outcome.

Disk Space: This is equivalent to the space on ones own PC’s hard drive. Web Hosts usually assign a definite amount of space to ones website, usually in Megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). It helps in finding out how much one can store on ones site.

Bandwidth: The quantity of data that can be retrieved from ones site within the bandwidth period is termed as Bandwidth .The bandwidth period is the measure of the duration of time before ones bandwidth gets reset once again, which is usually about a month. Bandwidth is also measured in MB and GB, similar to disk space. Before purchasing a hosting package it is always advisable to find out the effects of exceeding ones allocated bandwidth.

Domain Name: Everyone identified by a domain name on the Internet. One has to type the domain name into a web browser’s address bar to reach ones site. It depends whether ones hosting company offers a domain for free, or it has the facilities to provide a domain for a minimal cost.

SQL (MySQL, SQL Server etc.): Structured Query Language. Interaction with the databases is done using SQL.Chances are that when one start looking for webhosting one have no knowledge of SQL, and have no need of knowing it for at least a little while longer.

HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. Basically, how the Internet works. The protocol that administers the transfer of web pages from one place to another is HTTP.

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. This is (usually) used directly or indirectly when one makes his own website. Don’t get afraid by the name, the ‘language’ is very easy to learn.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. It is a protocol used for transferring pages and files from ones home PC to a server. It is easy to use and if ones host uses this method for file access it will provide the login information. FTP can be used by typing “FTP://” into My Computer on a windows box and it helps to access ones server as if it were a regular windows folder.

POP3: This is a common email ‘post box’ system. It is use to store emails for retrieval.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is a common protocol used to send emails.

A beginner does not need to know too much about the above two email technologies. If they’re listed, well. It implies one have email account with ones own website (i.e. the email name@yourdomain.com will reach him/her somehow)

Java, Perl, ASP, .NET, PHP are some of the languages used to enhance websites. A started should try learning HTML first before worrying to learn about these advanced languages. Generally they’re not too difficult to learn, but one will want a strong basing before tackling them.

The Internet is a wonderful source of knowledge, so whenever one wants information just fire up the favorite search engine and type in the problem. The Internet is full of sites about the Internet, so the information one want shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Building professional websites takes a lot of time and skill, so many companies hire people to do it for them. If this is the situation that one is in, talk to the designer he/she is hiring about hosting, as they may have struck a deal with a webhost to provide clients with cheaper hosting packages. Also, the professional designer will know what features one is going to need in a hosting plan.

The world of webhosting is not as complex as people assume it to be. One has to make sure that a little bit of research is necessary before diving in and then there will be less chances of one getting burned by a shifty ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ company. Check out the host’s rankings on a few Web Hosting Directories, do a search for reviews of the company, contact the support staff before signing up and enjoy the world opened by having ones own online presence.



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Firstly to own a website we have to have a host. There are generally two options we can opt for are shared and dedicated packages.

In a dedicated website hosting there is a single server while if the server is distributed among several customers than it is known as shared website hosting. In this piece of article we will discuss about the best option for our website.

Our website is stored on a server, simply like as our data is in our computers and whenever a request comes on internet it has to respond on that. A four numbers individual address known as Internet Protocol (IP) is allotted to each and every server separated by dots such as 123.456.78.9.

More details on Dedicated Hosting

All the resources of the server, as well as the IP address, are exclusive to a website and we can use it as we want with a help of dedicated server. A single site as well as many can be hosted/ operated. We have a right of entry to the entire bandwidth of the server, and we can use as much disk space as needed in our hosting.

A dedicated hosting is proved to be better for the companies with large complex websites and receiving lots of traffic. A dedicated server also enable the site to run any kind of script chooses by us. This proves to be beneficial for those who are developing new scripts for their business and wanted to test them without affecting other websites.

More details on Shared Hosting

If all the resources of the computer for that website are shared by single server is known as shared hosting or in other words Shared hosting allow us to place several websites on the same server, all sharing the same disk space, bandwidth, and IP address. A specified amount of disk space and band width to be used per month is limited by the host in order to provide satisfactory services to all the shared sites. A substantial penalty or a temporary closed down of Sites is charged/ done if they exceed their limit.

The amount of traffic receiving by the site is more important than a number of sites being shared by a particular server.

Since arriving requests are dealt with on a sequential order and also each server has a limited amount of bandwidth than there will be a long waiting queue. This may affect our neighboring sites very quickly as it depends on the wellness of our website display.

Shared hosting is a lot cheaper than dedicated one because the cost of operating the server is divided among many customers. It’s started for as little as $2 a month, while dedicated hosting can cost $100 per month.

In Shared hosting there are many risks associated with it. The entire server could be affected if the one programmed script run by the neighbors goes bad. Sometimes in extreme situations this may result in shut down of our site for a moment. If a search engine banned any neighbor for spamming tactics, which may affect everyone’s sharing that IP address. So it’s a good idea to first check the hosting companies to find out their policy for third-party scripts and inappropriate activities.

Which one are the best Options

Dedicated hosting is better for the large complicated websites that expect to receive 1,000 or more visitors a day. Also it’s a best option for a developer who wants to research and test new internet technologies.

While shared hosting is helpful for small companies and individuals with small sites. These are comparatively more reasonable but be assure that a host with a good reputation will protect our site from others that can put our site at risk too.



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The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.



http://www.google.com

There are two basic types of web hosting packages, shared website hosting and dedicated website hosting. I will explain what the terms mean and how to choose an appropriate type of hosting for your website.

Websites are stored on servers which are nothing more than special networked computers that respond to data requests over the internet. A web site that uses dedicated hosting has the server all to itself. This means that all the resources of the server as well as the IP address are unique to that website. Shared website hosting, on the other hand, places several websites on the same server, all of them sharing resources and the same IP address.

Shared website hosting is much cheaper than dedicated hosting because the cost of operating the server is split between many different customers. Shared hosting is available for as little as $2 a month but dedicated hosting could cost up to $100 a month or more.

SHARED WEBSITE HOSTING

As we mentioned above, websites that share a single server are sharing all the resources of that computer. This includes disk space and bandwidth as well as the IP address. In order to provide adequate service to all sites on a server, your host will limit each site to a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth used per month. Sites that exceed these limits may have to pay a hefty penalty.

Since each server has a limited amount of bandwidth, the amount of traffic your neighbors receive can affect how quickly your website is displayed. Each request coming in to the server is dealt with in the order it was received, so if there is a large queue, there will be a long wait. The number of sites that are sharing a particular server is not as important as the amount of traffic each site receives. A server hosting 200 low traffic sites will respond much faster than one which has 50 sites that are receiving a lot of visitors.

There are some risks associated with shared website hosting. If one of your neighbors runs a badly programmed script that runs amok the entire server could be affected. In extreme cases this could cause your site to be inaccessible for a time. Another risk is that if one of your neighbors is banned from search engines (for spamming tactics, for example) it could affect everyone sharing that IP address. Check with your hosting company to see their policy about third-party scripts and inappropriate activity.

DEDICATED HOSTING

With a dedicated server all the resources are yours to use as you please. You can use it to host a single site or multiple sites. Companies with large complex websites that receive a lot of traffic need to have dedicated hosting. Sites that use a dedicated server are also free to run any kind of script they wish. This may be ideal for those who are developing new scripts and need to test them without affecting other websites.

Small websites are usually better off with shared website hosting. The cost is more affordable especially for small companies and individuals. A reputable host will be careful not to allow activities that could jeopardize your site. Large complicated sites that receive more than 1000 visitors a day are better off with dedicated hosting. It is also a good choice for developers who wish to experiment with new Internet technologies.



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