Explanation of Web Hosting

Web hosting is a service that hosting corporations provide so that you can put your site on the web.

How can people access your site?

When you create a web site and you would like other individuals to see it, you will have to copy (or upload) it to a server. If you try to make the site reachable online by web hosting it on your own computer, there is no way for you to keep it online all the time, which is why hosting services exist.

How does web hosting work?

Hosting firms provide you with disk storage space for your website on their high-end computers (servers) and ensure uninterrupted Internet connectivity. When someone writes your domain (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's address bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can take a peek at the content of your web site.

Types of web hosting

With the progress of Internet technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into being to fulfill the different demands of website proprietors, including shared website hosting services, VPS hosting services and dedicated hosting services.

Shared web hosting

Shared website hosting is the most popular type of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where a single server is shared among lots of web hosting users who are restricted by the CPU, traffic and disk space quotas that they have been allocated. This form of hosting is typically less expensive - you don't have to purchase the whole web hosting server upfront, as it is shared among lots of hosting customers, and the web hosting supplier can afford to offer much cheaper prices. It is also easier to use - the hosting server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the hosting distributor handles all server maintenance procedures and software updates on your behalf.

The weakness of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's system resources with other users and if a given web site becomes really busy it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the websites on that web server, but the majority of hosting firms, including us at Octacore Networks, have security systems at work that obstruct that from occurring.

A description of a web hosting service

Because shared web hosting is the most widely used type of web hosting, the majority of hosting distributors and hosting customers simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. As there is a huge competition on the hosting market, most hosting suppliers strive to provide low prices and bonuses with their web hosting services. We, for example, offer different hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and annual, based on your budget. If you choose the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a bonus - one free-of-cost domain registration.

VPS web hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your site outgrows the resources offered by your shared hosting plan, a private virtual server hosting package is an appropriate option. virtual private web server hosting account owners still share the hardware resources of the physical machine with other private virtual web server hosting customers, but the hard drive is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like a real dedicated hosting server. The upside is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a private virtual web hosting server are not shared. Besides, the virtualization software gives you much more autonomy to configure your private virtual web hosting server, but it also calls for a more advanced level of technical expertise.

Dedicated Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Web Hosting solution, the client gets an entire server and can use all its resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most reliable of all website hosting solutions and offers a myriad of configuration options - the dedicated web hosting clients can pick the hardware and software specifications that will answer their requirements. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are two reasons why a dedicated web hosting plan is a perfect choice for a resource-swallowing corporate web site, for example - you will not share the dedicated web hosting server's system resources with anyone else and will be given complete root access. You will exert complete control over the machine, which will permit you to make any server configuration changes that you might require. The downside of the dedicated hosting solution is that a more advanced degree of technical knowledge is required - unless you employ an IT professional, you will be responsible for managing and configuring the dedicated hosting server. The dedicated server web hosting solution is also much more high-priced, because the cost of the dedicated hosting server isn't shared among any other users.

A website hosting recommendation for beginner users

If you are just beginning to create your site and need a web hosting solution to start out with, the shared website hosting solution persists to be the wisest option. If your web site grows beyond your shared web hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and requires no migration of your data, because only the parameters of your hosting account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting package to a more advanced one at any given time without worrying about the time remaining until expiration. Besides, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared hosting plan and still require more resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it means that your website's popularity has grown!), there always is the possibility to migrate to a Virtual Private Server hosting solution or a dedicated web hosting solution without having to switch hosting service providers.