Hosting A Website - What Do You Need To Know

Web hosting is especially useful for personal and small business, and e-commerce sites. It simply involves building your site, setting up an online store and promoting it in the search engines to get traffic to your website.

Definition of web hosting

The term web hosting is used to describe a variety of services that are necessary to make a website and then support that particular website. Hosting website is a service that promotes the websites to reside in the computer in a way that it can be accessible from the Internet 24 hours a day. This computer that host the services is called the host computer and the associated services are called website hosting.

How to get started?

What you need to know about hosting website is the way to get started. To begin with you should select proper hosting service plans. Make a plan that will best suit your needs. If you are getting started with a website, then consider first to have a proper domain name. A domain name is used to locate your website in the Internet. Make it short and easy. The best domain name would include that which has your company name in it like www.yourcompany.com. The next step is building your website. You can create your own website by using any of the page builders like Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, or Microsoft FrontPage.

Your next step for hosting website would be to sign up for affordable web hosting services. Prepare a web hosting account like Business account or Corporate account that can be accessed in exchange of a certain amount of money. Simply fill up a form stating your details and you can get the required account name.

The last step of hosting website involves your promoting the website. Almost all the website traffic comes from search engines. So be sure to design your website with search engine optimization factors in your mind. Submit your website to the major search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. to get traffic to your site.

If you are having a Broadband or ADSL connection, then you can use it to host your own website. Make sure that while hosting website, you choose a company that will best suit your budgetary needs and provide you with a username and password to allow you to FTP [File Transfer Protocol] your website to the hosting space.

Categories of website hosting services

 

Hosting website services can be divided into four different categories like shared, co-location, dedicated and In House. Shared hosting website put multiple websites on one server and all of tem use the same network connection, the same software and the same hardware sources. You can only design and manage the content of the website. Dedicated hosting website means you can rent your own dedicated server from a hosting provider. Although you may customize the server with remote server access, the hosting provider remains responsible for buying hardware, installing software and maintaining the server.

The collocated web host allows your company with space that stores your own server hardware and a high-speed connection to the Internet for that server. The In House server hosting website system offers you to set up a server on your own premises. You can buy the connectivity, hardware and software, configure and maintain the system.

Hosting website is the most secure, affordable and reliable way to get your website up and running in only 10 minutes. So get success in your business by hosting website and receiving traffic for it.

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Find more about Web Hosting on http://www.LeanderNet.com/Web_hosting/Web_hosting.php. More useful content on LeanderNet - http://www.LeanderNet.com

By Oliver Turner Published: 3/24/2007

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Important considerations before choosing a web hosting provider

This article outlines the most important considerations one should keep in mind before signing up with a new web hosting provider.

Enlarge Image The first thing before choosing a web hosting provider is that you should be fully aware of your hosting requirements. If you are a beginner wanting to host a personal web site, then your only concern is that you get a decent amount of disk space for your web site with a host that is as cheap as $5 per month. However, if you are a developer, an online entrepreneur or an online business looking for e-commerce capabilities or advanced scripting technologies, then you can determine your requirements in the following order.

(1) Whether you need Shared Hosting or Dedicated Hosting:

This depends mainly on two major requirements, the traffic your web site is expected to receive and the degree of administrative privileges you need. If you expect your web site to receive huge amounts of traffic, then you will need to have a Dedicated Server which definitely has a much greater bandwidth offering. Also you should select Dedicated server hosting if your web site requires customized options, secure information or complex applications i.e. e-commerce, dynamic content, database and multimedia applications.

(2) Whether you need Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting:

If you’re going to use server technologies such as ASP, JSP etc or intend to run Microsoft applications like Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database on your server, then you should use a Windows hosting provider. Although ASP can be run on the Linux platform using some commercial applications, there are security and reliability concerns related to it. However, if you want to use ColdFusion, it can run on both Linux and Windows platforms.

(3) What are your Space and Bandwidth requirements:

Many web hosting providers nowadays offer generous amounts of disk space from 1 GB to 3 GB. However, if your web site mainly acts as a download resource, then your disk space requirements may be 5 to 10 times greater than this. The second consideration is how much traffic your web site is expected to receive which will let you estimate your bandwidth requirements.

(4) How many Parked Domains and Subdomains do you need:

Parked domains are very advantageous and can significantly increase the amount of traffic to your web site. Similarly, subdomains can help with your search engine rankings by pointing to specific directories of your web site. Parked domains and subdomains occasionally come free with certain web hosting packages. However if you need more, you will have to pay an additional price per month.

(5) FTP Accounts and Anonymous FTP Requirements:

You may need more than one FTP account if you have coworkers working on your web site project at different locations. The Anonymous FTP permits the general public to access certain directories on your web server to whom they have been granted permission by you. In most cases, you will need a dedicated IP address for Anonymous FTP to function.

(6) Whether you need e-commerce Features:

If you need e-commerce features, you should choose a web hosting provider that provides e-commerce functionality such as shopping carts and the ability to accept credit cards. You should also check whether their server is SSL secure.

In addition to your own hosting requirements, the following considerations must be kept in mind when looking for a quality web hosting provider.

(1) More than 99.5% uptime:

Choose a web hosting provider that has an uptime greater than 99.5% and if there is an uptime guarantee, it’s even better. If your web site is for business purposes, it’s very crucial that your site stays online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

(2) Fast Servers:

The level of connectivity of your web hosting provider to the Internet is very important. So you should choose a web hosting provider with at least a T3 connection to the major Internet backbone. Analysis has shown that the average web visitor waits for about 30 seconds before your web page loads. So if your web site takes more than 30 seconds to load, chances are that you will loose a lot of visitors and consequently sales.

 

(3) Server Backups:

To make your data secure, your web hosting provider must have a power backup system and should backup the data to an external device in order to prevent the data loss due to failure. Check how frequently the web hosting provider backups the data, i.e. daily or weekly.

(4) Disk Space and Bandwidth:

Choose a web hosting provider that meets your disk space and bandwidth requirements. Most web hosting providers offer 1 GB to 3 GB of disk space, so if your web site is not mainly a download resource, then this factor is not that important for you. However, as regards the bandwidth, it should be as much as possible because your traffic can increase in the future thereby requiring more data transfer. Also check that you have the option of buying more disk space and bandwidth when required.

(5) Unrestricted CGI, SSH, FTP access & Anonymous FTP:

If you have a professional web site, you will need to run CGI scripts, have SSH (Secure Shell) access and FTP access. CGI and FTP access is provided by most web hosting providers whereas SSH access is provided by a few. You may also need to check if anonymous FTP access is provided.

(6) Software/Scripts:

Choose a web hosting provider that has an extensive script library that you can use to add guestbooks, forms, surveys, newsletters etc to your web site.

(7) E-commerce capabilities and SSL:

Choose a web hosting provider that provides you with e-commerce capabilities with shopping cart software and also merchant accounts. The web hosting provider must also have an SSL secure server for safe and risk-free transactions.

(8) Web-Based Administration:

Almost all web hosting providers nowadays provide a control panel to access and manage web site features. Ask for a demo of their control panel if possible and check to make sure that it is simple as well as comprehensive. The control panel should provide access to FTP, e-mail, databases, e-commerce and all other functions for effective web site management. VDeck 2.0 and CPanel are the leading brands of administration control panels.

(9) Full e-mail services:

Choose a web hosting provider that provides both POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, web-based e-mail, autoresponders, mailing lists, forwarding accounts and antivirus and spam filtering software.

(10) Moneyback Guarantee:

If the Web hosting provider gives a moneyback guarantee, it’s even better because it makes you absolutely risk-free.

(11) 24/7/365 Customer Support:

The web hosting provider should provide as many support channels as possible including an FAQ section, a knowledgebase, video and flash tutorials, toll-free support, e-mails support, live chat support and a community forum. Try e-mailing the web host a couple of times to check how quickly they respond to your request. The customer support should be as prompt as possible and should be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. This is crucial because if you run into problems and the support staff is not receptive or knowledgeable, you will be helpless.

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Michael Smith is an expert web hosting analyst. His site Web Hosting Provider reviews and rates the leading web hosting providers.

By Michael Smith Published: 2/17/2006

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Posted under Dedicated Server