By What is Web Hosting?
Surprisingly, we all use the internet every day almost every minute of our lives to search for answers to many questions that we have. But how many of us actually wonder where those answers come from? Who wrote them and put them there. How are you just by a click of your phone able to access almost about anything?
Let’s see what goes behind the scene.
Every article that you read belongs to a website and is hosted on a server that is provided by a hosting provider. Website hosting is like renting or buying a space on the Internet to publish a website. Websites are hosted or stored on special computers called servers. The server contains all the concerned files related to your website. When you enter a domain name in the search bar in the browser, your computer connects with the server and delivers the page or website to you through the browser.
A domain name is the address of your website that people enter in the search bar of their browsers to visit your website. Internet is a matrix of computers connected to each other. For them to easily identify one another, they are assigned an IP Address. An IP address is a series of numbers separated with dots. Example: 172.16.254.1
Now, Computers can easily remember these numbers and identify each other. However, it is difficult for us humans to remember and use these numbers instead of names to connect to the websites. As a solution to this problem, domain names were introduced. A domain name is simply any word or combination of words that makes it easy to remember. Now to visit a website all you have to do is to remember the domain name of it, enter it into the URL bar and voila. For example, technologify.co
In a layman language, “ If the domain name is the address of your house then web hosting is the plot on which your house is built”.
And as for the domain name, you have to do it. It is something that should either reflect your personality or your niche.
How to build a website?
You will need both web hosting and a domain name. You can purchase yourself an available domain but note that it will be available for a specific period of time(usually a year). Once you have a domain name point it to a web hosting provider in order to save all your website’s files. You can purchase both the domain name and the hosting from the same company or different or you could explore a little to learn more about the stuff and then make a choice because the wrong one could cost a lot. Especially when you are just starting with your first website. I know you must feel overwhelmed with all the information available online because trust me, I did too.
How to choose the best web hosting provider?
There are tons of web hosts available in the market today providing you with different services.
Plans could range from free with limited options to expensive with almost every feature available. Whatever you choose will depend on how you plan to use your website and what your budget is.
Important features to be kept in mind while purchasing a hosting are,
- Data Storage
- Bandwidth
- Uptime
- Customer Support
- Types of web hosting
Data Storage
Storage space is the total amount of space on a server that is used to store all the corresponding files used to create your website. These files can be anything from HTML files, images, website scripts and email. The space allotted is usually in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB). Many hosting plans also provide you with unmetered or unlimited data storage. Consider data storage space as an old school file cabinet. As the information grows, space grows. Same with your website and hosting space. The disadvantage with a filing system is that you have to plan the storage space prior to purchasing it whereas in the case of online web hosting you have the luxury to upgrade or downgrade at your convenience. Data storage is also needed in case you want to take backup of all the files supporting your website.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that takes place between your website and end-users. Bandwidth capacity totally depends on the needs of the individual or business and on the popularity of the website itself. Whenever a user visits a website, their computer downloads all the files that construct a webpage from the server before even being displayed. The size of the files downloaded determines the bandwidth that is used up at that moment. Files can be anything from images, text, and documents that accounts for how much. Besides the view, website backup requires bandwidth as well. We often overlook a factor that occurs whenever you send an email. Bandwidth usage is also counted when you send emails with large files to multiple people. Always choose a plan that let you expand your expectations when it comes to your website.
Uptime
Uptime is the amount of time your website is accessible to the rest of the world. Downtime is inevitable. Most web hosts will provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee which loosely translates to 20-43 minutes of downtime per month. A website with frequent downtimes or slow loading, loses visitors, customers, and can hit revenue hard. End-user doesn’t mind switching to your competitor’s site in such scenarios. Downtime could also affect you with content loading. Keep in mind the uptime factor before you purchase the hosting by reading the reviews of other customers or don’t worry, we have got you covered here with our few top picks to choose from.
Customer Support
No website runs without an issue especially a business one and there will always be a visitor who will feel difficulty in accessing your website due to a technical glitch. Having consistent and reliable customer support from the web hosting provider potentially adds effectiveness to your website. We, here, present you with the web hosting companies that offer 24/7 support.
Types of web hosting
To meet the requirements of both the website and the customer, different types of web hosting services are made available. Each comes with its own boon and bane. It depends completely on you, your need for your website as each website functions differently. Your website may attract a regular amount of visitors to a massive amount of them. Some plans are well fit for small to medium-sized business and they may be too much for personal blogs. You can select the kind of hosting from the options that we provide you with.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is when a website is hosted on a server that is shared by many other customers. Shared hosting is also cheap. It’s best for people who are just starting out. The only downside and the major one is that since you store all your website’s data on one server along with tons of other websites your website’s performance will get impacted if the server crashes due to other websites. It’s great for personal blogs or small-medium sized business websites.
VPS Hosting
A virtual private server, or VPS, is a single physical server that is divided into multiple virtual spaces. Websites are hosted individually on VPS and only you can access them. It is great for medium-sized businesses. There won’t be a strain on your website because of other websites as this is not shared hosting services. At a decent price, you can get VPS hosting which is advantageous over shared hosting in terms of high performance, security and reliability.
Cloud Hosting
With everything moving to the cloud these days, hosting providers have upgraded to cloud hosting as well and it has become really popular in the last few years. Cloud hosting takes several machines and uses them to create one or more virtual servers shared across them. It uses interconnected web servers that supply an affordable, scalable and reliable web infrastructure. You will face less downtime to 100% uptime.
“Once a hacker has access to one website, it leaves other websites on the server vulnerable as well” Rollins said.
Performance of another website will not affect yours. And hence why it was expensive, but cheaper options are now emerging, providing access to smaller companies. Cloud hosting plans usually offer unmetered, reliable bandwidth and unlimited disk space for as many domains as you have. This is the reason why so many large businesses are switching to cloud hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
While VPS hosting reserves server resources for your website dedicated hosting reserves the entire machine housed in a data centre for your website. All the server resources go directly to your website. You can configure the server according to your requirements. This makes dedicated hosting highly secure, reliable and good at performance. This is the most expensive type of hosting and hence the reason it is best for larger businesses or websites with a lot of traffic as long as they don’t handle customer’s vital information.
Ecommerce Hosting
E-commerce hosting provider provides customers with the special features to design online stores or eCommerce websites. From a web server to serve a company’s page to accept, process, and confirm sales orders, all these features are included. E-commerce hosting also includes templates for building virtual storefronts or online catalogs, providing software for customized electronic “shopping carts,” taking and filling customer orders, arranging for secure credit-card purchasing, and providing tools for tracking and managing inventory. E-commerce hosting may also provide you with other services like EDI(Electronic Data Interchange), demographic or other information for marketing purposes or transactions between businesses.
Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting lets a customer be a seller. You could rent or sell your hosting space on the server to someone else. This type of hosting could be beneficial when you have purchased an extra space or you have resources like bandwidth, CPU, etc that is not required. This will also benefit you with a steady source of income. A reseller hosting plan is also helpful for anyone with multiple domains.