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From Website Hosting Wiki

You keep hearing the term ‘web hosting service’ but you’re not sure exactly what it means. A web hosting service is the service you use to load and make your website live. This service provides you with a way to make your website accessible to other people on the Internet by providing you with space on a server to save all of your website files and other associated content. Servers are located in a data center and the web hosting service maintains the data center and some data centers even host servers for other companies that they do not own. This service is called colocation. Web hosting services can be free for personal websites or can cost up to $400 for business websites depending on the level of service you need.

Web hosting services vary widely from company to company. The simplest service is basic web pages and small scale file hosting. Files are uploaded onto the server by using a web interface or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) that allows you to upload multiple files at one time. The files are not changed when you load them onto the server and many Internet service providers offer this service free to their customers or you can secure service through another web hosting provider. Most personal web pages need very little in the way of extras in their web hosting package while larger sites, especially e-commerce sites, can utilize the additional software and application provided by the web hosting service, such as database support, forums, and SSL certification. As the website owner, you will be provided a control panel or some form of interface to use to manage your website on the web hosting server.

When you first look into a web hosting service one of the things you are going to want to verify is the uptime or the percentage of the time the host server has your website accessible on the Internet. Any web hosting service company should be aiming for a 99% uptime. Server restarts and maintenance – planned or unplanned – usually make up that other 1%. Occasionally a server’s downtime – when the server is being worked on, upgraded, etc. – will be longer than the web hosting company expects. You will want to make sure that there is some form of refund or reduced price in your service contract with the company to compensate you for this downtime.

Web hosting services come in a wide variety of options. Here are the most common types that you will come across when you begin to research companies to host your website.

• Free Web Hosting – the service is free but the service package is very basic, limiting you on what you can do and how much space you get. More often than not, your web site will be supported by advertisements that pop up from time to time.

• Shared Web Hosting – your website shares a common server with a bunch of others and there is a common pool of resources like RAM and the CPU itself. Your website could even be hosted with a reseller.

• Reseller Web Hosting – allows customers to become web hosts and are usually affiliated with a web hosting service provider.

• Virtual Private Server – this option takes one server and splits is into separate sections so that each section acts as if it was a dedicated, stand alone server when it’s really not. Each website has their own root access to their virtual server.

• Dedicated Hosting – The customer pays for their own dedicated server and has complete control over it but does not actually own it. Self-managed or unmanaged plans also fall under this heading and the customer is responsible for the security and maintenance of their server box.

• Managed hosting – similar to dedicated server hosting, the customer does not get full control of anything other than their data. The server is leased to the customer, but the web hosting company manages the server to maintain its integrity.

• Colocation hosting – the server is actually owned by the customer but the web hosting service provides the customer with the physical space, electrical and Internet needs for the server. The customer’s own staff is responsible for upgrading the server.

• Clustered Hosting – numerous servers host the same websites in an effort to provide better resources for your high traffic website.

• Grid hosting – a form of distributed hosting where clusters act like grids and is composed of multiple nodes.

• Home server – a server that is in a private residence that hosts one or more websites and uses a consumer-grade broadband connection. Many ISPs try to block these types of servers because they refuse to provide static IP addresses.

When you want to obtain web hosting service, evaluate what you need in a hosting service and then begin to research web hosting services that can meet your needs. Make sure you consider what type of scripting software and operating system you need, whether or not you want e-mail services, multi-media services, or e-commerce services for your website. If you are new to building websites, consider using a web hosting service that provides you with a web content management system to help you control your website.