What is Web Hosting?

If you have made a decision to establish your own personal site, but are not quite sure about what a web site is and are not aware of the expression "web hosting", this article is dedicated to defining these concepts in plain language.

What exactly is a web site?

A web site is an amalgamation of webpages assembled in a systematic fashion. It has a unique web site address, also referred to as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). A website may consist of only one single web page and sometimes may even include as many as a thousand webpages.

What is a web hosting server?

A web hosting server enables you to upload your website 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 held in a datacenter facility with special cooling systems, whose purpose is to ensure the seamless performance of the web hosting server and all the websites located on it.

In short, a web hosting server will be truly a launching pad when the time arrives for you to launch your site. It could be any type of site - a business web site having lots of pages, or a site, which contains only a few web pages and which you have developed just for your pals and relatives.

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

As soon as you have made a decision about what sort of web site you would like to develop, the next move is to discover what sort of web hosting service you have to select for your online endeavor. Basically, there are two types of website hosting services - free-of-charge website hosting services and professional paid web hosting services. The free-of-cost web hosting solution is typically utilized by persons that do not own a business website.

Upsides and downsides of the free hosting solution

You will not get a lot of features with a free-of-cost hosting plan. Features such as traffic, memory and web hosting storage space are restricted and insufficient for a complex e-commerce website or a business-related web site, or even for a web site with a lot of graphics. Additionally, there are a lot of banner adverts put on your website by the web hosting provider. These adverts occupy lots of space on your website and are pretty frustrating.

Shared hosting

The professional paid shared hosting services are more dependable and include a lot of sophisticated features aside from the high-end hosting server that will host your website and its data. Still, it is important to find out which features your web site demands before buying your web hosting plan. You should not rush and wind up investing in something that your website does not demand.

Find your web hosting packages provider

It is not tough to find a hosting vendor. You need to just carry out an online search in order to find a web hosting solutions provider that matches your web site's needs. Before you make your actual choice, have a glimpse at the specs of the web hosting packages provided by the hosting providers that have grabbed your interest. We, for example, are among the best website hosting providers on the market at present. The wide variety of web hosting services and our prices are what renders us an enticing choice. However, you must confirm what type of web hosting service you require and whether the price suits your allowance. Moreover, you must not forget to explore the hosting distributor's ToS prior to opening an account to make certain that your website is not violating them.

Opening a web hosting account

As soon as you have found out what features are optimal for your site, the next step is to open an account with the hosting solutions provider of your preference. You will receive all the necessary tools for handling your web site files and databases. With us, for example, you will get a web hosting Control Panel, which has domain name, website, database and e-mailbox account administration sections. You log into the hosting Control Panel using a unique user name and password, which gives you safe access to the part of the web hosting server where your site will be located.

Uploading your site

You can either upload your web files via an FTP client or, as is with most web hosting service providers, through a web-based tool that is integrated within the hosting Control Panel. With us, the File Manager is pretty user-friendly and offers features comparable to those encountered in Windows Explorer, which renders file management very easy. We offer also a web site building tool and a PHP-driven script installer, which you can utilize to create your site if you have no programming capabilities and are taking your very first steps in web design. The online website builder, called SiteStudio, will also save you the time and effort of making a web site on your personal computer and then uploading it using an FTP software application or the File Manager interface.