What is Web Hosting?

If you have decided to develop your own personal site, but are not quite sure about what a web site is and are not familiar with the expression "web hosting", this article is devoted to explaining these notions in simple English.

What exactly is a website?

A web site is a collection of webpages brought together systematically. It has a unique web site address, also known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). A website may contain just one single web page and sometimes may even consist of as many as a thousand pages.

What is a web hosting server?

A hosting server permits you to upload your site onto it. In some cases, there might be even thousands of web sites on one single hosting server. The hosting server basically is a computer with specific hardware, which is located in a data center facility with special cooling systems, whose task is to safeguard the smooth performance of the web hosting server and all the web sites accommodated on it.

In short, a hosting server will be truly a launch pad when the time arrives for you to launch your web site. It could be any type of web site - a corporate web site having multiple web pages, or a site, which includes just a couple of webpages and which you have developed just for your mates and relatives.

You've made a decision about what your web site will be, now what?

As soon as you have made a decision about what type of website you desire to create, the next move is to find out what type of web hosting service you have to choose for your online project. Basically, there are two types of website hosting services - free-of-cost website hosting services and professional paid website hosting services. The free web hosting solution is ordinarily used by persons that do not own a business website.

Strong and weak sides of the charge-free hosting solution

You will not receive lots of features with a free web hosting package. Features such as traffic, memory and web server hard drive space are restricted and insufficient for an elaborate online store or a business web site, or even for a site with a lot of artwork. Additionally, there are a lot of banner commercials placed on your website by the hosting plans provider. These ads take up lots of space on your site and are rather irritating.

Shared hosting

The professional paid shared hosting services are more dependable and include many sophisticated features aside from the high-power web hosting server that will accommodate your site and its files. Still, it is essential to know which features your website needs prior to buying your web hosting plan. You should not rush and wind up paying for something that your web site does not demand.

Choose your web hosting solutions provider

It is not tough to find a web host. You have to simply conduct an online survey in order to find a web hosting provider that satisfies your website's demands. Before you take your actual choice, take a gaze at the specs of the web hosting plans supplied by the hosting service providers that have attracted your interest. We, for instance, are among the premier web hosting companies on the marketplace today. The large selection of hosting solutions and our prices are what renders us an appealing choice. Nonetheless, you must ascertain what type of hosting service you need and if the price corresponds to your allowance. Moreover, you must always remember to take a look at the hosting provider's Terms of Service prior to opening an account to make sure that your web site is not violating them.

Signing up for a website hosting account

Once you have found out what features are ideal for your web site, the next move is to sign up for an account with the hosting packages provider of your choice. You will receive all the essential tools for managing your web site files and databases. With us, for example, you will obtain a web hosting Control Panel, which consists of domain, web site, database and email mailbox account management sections. You log in the Control Panel using a unique username and password, which grants you safe access to the part of the web hosting server where your website will be located.

Uploading your website

You can either upload your web files via an FTP client application or, as is with most hosting vendors, through an online tool that is integrated within the web hosting Control Panel. With us, the File Manager is very intuitive and offers features comparable to those observed in Windows Explorer, which renders file management exceptionally easy. We offer additionally a site building tool and a PHP-powered script installation tool, which you can use to set up your website if you have no programming abilities and are making your very first steps in web design. The web-based site building tool, whose name is SiteStudio, will also save you the time and effort of making a web site on your PC and then uploading it through FTP client software or the File Manager interface.