Web Hosting Explained
Every website that you view on the internet has to be hosted on a web server, somewhere in the world. Web hosting put simply is a service that provides individuals or organisations with a way of storing images, web pages, videos and everything else you see on the net, and making them accessible via the internet.
There are quite literally thousand of companies that provide web hosting services, but what level of hosting do you need for your site?
Free Hosting
A quick search on Google will show that there is no shortage of companies providing free web hosting services. Generally they give you some web space in a directory under their own domain name (such as www.freewebhostsrus293.co.uk/mysite), and most require you to carry adverts or give their services a plug somewhere on your site.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common form of hosting among small to medium sized site that want to project a professional image. With shared hosting you buy a certain amount of webspace to store your files, and usually a limited amount of bandwidth or monthly transfer. You will also use your own domain name (such as www.example.com) to access your website.
Virtual Private Server Hosting
A Virtual Private Server, or VPS, performs and acts just like a dedicated server, but is allocated a certain amount of disk space and processing power that can only be used by that particular VPS. A VPS server is ideal for web designers and smaller web hosting companies before they can afford a dedicated server. VPS owners can install their own software and applications, host as many websites as their resources will allow and can be restarted without affecting other users of the same physical machine.
Dedicated Server Hosting
With a dedicated server you rent a physical machine and have exclusice use of all of its resources - disk space, and processing power etc. This means that you have complete control over what software is installed on the machine. You can host more than one site on a dedicated server - after all that's what happens with shared hosting.
