Mar 21 2010
Getting To Grips with Web Hosting
What is meant by web hosting?
When you sign up with a web hosting provider you will be getting space on their server where your site can be placed in order for others to be able to view it on the web. Web hosts have constant access to the internet and huge amounts of hard drive space which means they can offer this service to other businesses. The way in which a visitor will check out and view your site is by way of your web hosting provider.
Why should you have web hosting?
You could try to host your website yourself but it would probably take up too much of your time and it is very unlikely that your personal computer would be able to handle this type of activity. Your home computer would need to be constantly sending files to the internet and you would need to have a lot of technical expertise to be able to manage everything. Also you could find that your site is more susceptible to hackers if it is hosted by you.
How to choose the best web hosting service?
Although there are free web hosting services available they may not be as reliable as paid web hosting providers. You will more than likely have to allow a free web hosting provider space on your site to put advertisements in order to get this free service. This is the way a free web hosting provider can make money. As well as that, you may find that there will be certain restrictions when it comes to the amount of files and the size of files that you can upload to your site. Technical support can be poor with these services and your site might have far more downtime than uptime.
Choosing a paid web host will mean you will have access to many more features and will find them much more reliable. Paid web hosts are so reliable that many of them even offer 99% guaranteed uptime. Other services which paid web hosts usually provide are email accounts as well as larger amounts of bandwidth and space. Technical support tends to be a lot better with paid hosting services.
Whenever you make your decision to enter the big, bad world of internet marketing, you should really have hosting dealt with beforehand. But the world of web hosting can be confusing. For example, you may come across reseller web hosting or even linux web hosting on your travels.
