How Shared Web Hosting Functions

Shared web hosting is a service that hosting service providers offer so that you can publish your website on the World Wide Web.

How can people check out your web site?

When you set up a web site and you wish other persons to check it out, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a web server. If you attempt to make the website available online by shared web hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it constantly online, which is why website hosting services came into being.

How does shared web hosting work?

Hosting firms provide you with hard disk storage space for your site on their high-powered computers (web servers) and ensure continuous network connectivity. When somebody types your web site address (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's address bar, they will be connected to the server where they can take a look at the content of your site.

Types of hosting

With the advancement of web technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to answer the different requirements of website proprietors, among them shared website hosting services, VPS hosting services and dedicated server web hosting services.

Shared web hosting

Shared hosting is the most widely used form of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where one single server is shared between multiple hosting clients who are limited by the CPU, web traffic and hosting server disk space quotas that they have been allotted. This type of website hosting is generally less expensive - you don't have to buy the entire hosting server in advance, since it is divided among lots of hosting customers, and the hosting provider can afford to provide much cheaper prices. It is also easier to use - the server is pre-installed with all the required software and the web hosting vendor takes care of all server maintenance tasks and security updates for you.

The disadvantage of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's system resources with other people and if a given web site becomes very busy it may influence (and slow down) all the other web sites on that hosting server, but most hosting suppliers, including us at iDataRack.com, have protection platforms in place that prevent that from happening.

A description of a hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most common form of web hosting, most hosting firms and hosting users simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is an enormous rivalry on the hosting market, most web hosting vendors endeavor to offer cheap prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for instance, offer different website hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and annual, depending on your funds. If you choose the annual invoicing cycle, you will obtain a bonus - one charge-free domain registration.

VPS web hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated web server hosting solution. If your site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting package, a private virtual hosting server package is an appropriate solution. VPS server web hosting account holders still share the hardware resources of the physical machine with other VPS server web hosting customers, but the physical server is partitioned using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated resources and can be configured practically like an actual dedicated web server. The advantage is that the CPU and the memory on a Virtual Private Server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization technology gives you much more autonomy to configure your private virtual hosting server, but it also calls for a higher level of technical knowledge.

Dedicated Server Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Server Web Hosting solution, the client gets a whole web server and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated server hosting solution is the most reliable of all hosting solutions and offers a lot of configuration possibilities - the dedicated web hosting customers can select the hardware and software specifications that will match their needs. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are among the reasons why a dedicated server web hosting package is a perfect option for a high resource-devouring business web portal, for example - you will not share the physical machine's system resources with anyone else and will get full root access. You will have complete control over the web hosting server, which will allow you to make any configuration changes that you might require. The weak side of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical expertise is required - unless you hire an Information Technology expert, it will be your obligation to administer and configure the dedicated server. The dedicated server hosting solution is also far more expensive, since the cost of the dedicated server isn't shared between any other customers.

A website hosting advice for beginner users

If you are just beginning to develop your site and are searching for a web hosting solution to start out with, the shared website hosting solution persists to be the most suitable option. If your web site outgrows your website hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and does not necessitate migration of your web site files, because only the parameters of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting plan to a more advanced one at any given time without having to worry about the time left before expiration. Moreover, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared website hosting package and still need more system resources (which is great sometimes - it suggests that your site's popularity has grown!), there always is the option to switch to a private virtual hosting server or a dedicated server hosting platform without needing to swap web hosting service providers.