With the rapid advancement of internet services web hosting has become a much sought after activity as far as online businesses are concerned. A web hosting company provides you the space to host either your personal homepage or your business profile and webpage. Using a web hosting company can prove very beneficial to you, as even your prospective employers might want to take a look at your personal thoughts and other details from your very own web page. Businesses too can be successfully expanded and consolidated over the internet by building great networks through your business website. For all of this to work, one must understand the importance of web hosting.
Paid hosting, free hosting, file web hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting and clustered hosting are some of the many types of web hosting. Choose among these available ones while selecting your web host which is appropriate for your demands and requirements.
Following are the three common kinds of web hosting:
Shared hosting
A shared host is a server which supports many web pages. A shared host is generally the best for a business where the expenses does not permit them to go for the dedicated web hosting services, and a shared hosting helps them save a lot of unnecessary expenses as well.
Various maintenance features are provided by the service provider of the shared hosting. These include security updates, server management, anti-virus backup and server software.
Web hosting is primarily done in two ways: the IP address based way and the name based way. In the IP address way, the host who has his own individual IP address provides each of the sites he hosts with their own SSL certificate, thereby endowing a sense of security to the websites. While for name based hosting, the various web sites hosted are provided with a single IP address which is to be used by all.
The sense of security that comes with the IP based hosting may not come with a shared host. On the other hand, the shared host might come cheaper than the IP based hosting.
The incompatibility with relatively old browsers is one of the many disadvantages of the name based hosting system. A failure to send out requests carrying the host name will occur with a HTTP/1.0 browser without up gradation. Hand name based hosts cannot support HTPPS websites because they share the same digital certificates. It is virtually impossible to access if the Domain Name System (DNS) conks out any website hosted by a name based web host.
CPU, disc space, and your websites Bandwidth being affected or slowed as other sites are using the same server are the problems of a cost effective shared web hosting system. This system also puts certain system level things out of your control like scripts and the system software being used. But you can be comfortable without such features if your website is relatively small. You might want to gain knowledge about Virtual Private Sector or VPs if such things do bother you and you want some control over the things powering your website.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
The software of the divides it into many virtual machines though it has a single server like a shared server. Each such VPS gets their own allotted RAM, disc space etc though the servers total resources are still shared by the various websites being hosted. Using the allocated resources, each operates completely independently.
You can do various things as you are granted this much greater freedom when compared to a shared host. These different things range from running a totally different OS to having your own scripts and choice of software, without disturbing the other sites on the server.
The root level access to the main server that you get in a VPS is virtually similar to the freedoms associated with dedicated servers. Only in case of a VPS you can install software of your choice, create accounts etc all at a comparatively lesser price than a dedicated server.
Due to the internal divisions of the system of the VPS, there is more security to a website than what a shared host provides. In a shared host, if someone hacked into the main server, then every site would get affected, which is not so in case of VPS.
The division of the server generally occurs evenly with the total resources being distributed equally among the number of websites that are sharing the server. Therefore if there are 10 websites on a VPS server, everything from the disk space to the RAM is divided by 10, with each website getting 10% of the whole.
Dedicated hosting
As mentioned earlier, dedicated hosting is meant for huge concerns who wish to have sufficient control of the website in their hands. In this case, a website gets a single server for its individual capacity, thus giving webmasters total control of the website. Besides the software, all other factors like supervision of power, security, etc. is addresses by the web hosting company.
If your website requirements are large bandwidth, greater resources like disk space and if you are looking for a high quality, customized server, opting for a dedicated host seems to be the perfect solution. You can then choose a host of features for your website like operating system, settings, software and multi-media necessities. A dedicated hosting service is also the answer to all those who cannot afford to purchase a server of their own, but want similar services.
A dedicated server can also bail you out and save expenses up to 85%, if your website has a high traffic count but you do not have the monitory resources and technical know how to maintain, install and run your own IT staff, programs that will run everything smoothly and most of all if you cant pay for a network administrator.
As you know that you are the only one using this server, a dedicated server thus offers 100% assurance and security to you. Downtime problems and security issues are also solved if there are no other sites on the server. Companies feel safer using a managed dedicated host providing additional data security. This is especially true for companies that have client databases and other important information up on their sites.
Though shared web hosts arrive with the heavy burdens of threatening security and accessibility concerns if other sites face heavy traffic at any point, they are nevertheless cheaper. You will have the comfort and knowledge that you are using a thousand time safer server and which cannot be slowed down by traffic of other websites with a slightly costlier dedicated server. Those looking for forward to expand and grow their business will consequently find a dedicated server perfectly suited to their needs.
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Republished with permission from www.webhostingmadness.com, providing web hosting articles, industry reviews and ratings of today's top web hosting companies. Go to webhostingmadness.com for more information about and exclusive deals on web hosting.