Web Hosting Explained for Novice and Newbie

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Web Hosting

For a web site to be made available on the Internet, it has to be hosted on a web server. This is where web hosting comes in. Web hosting is a service that provides individuals, organizations and users with online systems for storing information, images, videos, or any content accessible via the Web. There are plenty of companies (called Web Hosts) that provide Web hosting and they range from Free hosting to Dedicated Hosting.

Different types of hosting that are provided by Web hosts are discussed below.

Free Hosting
If you want to host a personal web site then choosing a web host is an easy task. There are plenty of free hosts who will host your website for free, giving you space in a directory under their domain, e.g. ww.xyzhosts.com/yoursite/'. The only criteria set by free hosts is that you may have to carry some of their banners or mention the free hosts name
somewhere on your site.

Shared Hosting
Shared web hosting allows you to host your website using a domain name you own (of the form www.abcd.com). You will be alloted a certain amount of web space, measured usually in Mb on a server you share with other people. This gives a professional image to your Web site.

Dedicated Server Hosting
Dedicated server is the one where you rent the use of a whole machine. This can be used to host one or more of your websites. Since you are renting the use of a machine, you have total control over what software will be installed on the machine. A major benefit of this kind of hosting is that this allows increased traffic to your sites. You could alternatively co-locate your own server at the host's data center who can look after it for you.

Reseller Web Hosting
A reseller is a company that purchases goods from another company and sells them at a higher price to another company or to customers. Reseller web hosting plans allow you to be a web hosting company yourself. Most web hosting companies themselves have a web hosting company who host their server. Some web hosting companies provide a service where small companies can resell web space on their servers for a small fee. You may wonder why go with the smaller company rather than the big. Well the smaller companies may add on certain features to make their plans more attractive and provide more services. Resellers can sometimes be better. The important things to consider are support, reliability and competitive pricing.

Web Hosting Platforms

Unix

Unix is traditionally the operating system of choice. It has been around a long time and is widely regarded as the most reliable. It uses memory and disk space efficiently and is able to do more with fewer resources. Unix systems are less user-friendly than Windows systems. If you are developing a simple Web site, this should not be a problem, since your only access to the Unix server will be via FTP to upload your site. However, if you are developing an advanced site you will need to become familiar with Unix commands.

Windows

Microsoft's solution to Web Hosting, Windows, is becoming popular with Web developers with its powerful ASP and ASP.NET programming environments. It also integrates well with .NET server technologies such as SQL Server 2000, Commerce Server 2002 and BizTalk Server 2002. Recent advances in Windows Server technology and the release of the Windows 2003 Server provides what is now arguably the highest performance server environment. It provides exceptional support for the developer community and has a single vendor (Microsoft) commitment to its ongoing development.

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Thanks for the detailed information on the various hosting types, I am sure visitors and possibly even members will find it useful.