There are thousands of web hosting providers out there
and selecting the right package for your requirements
can seem daunting. Our guide to web hosting may help
you to choose the right package for you by giving you
the facts.
What are Web Hosts?
At the most basic level a web host is company that provides
a place to host your website. Your website is stored
on a specialist computer known as a server that is permanently
connected to the Internet and will serve up your site
to users on the Internet
The size and scope of a web hosting company can vary
significantly, from a small one-man company hosting
a few websites, to large corporations with purpose built
buildings containing many servers hosting possibly thousands
of sites. Many web hosts out there are what are known
as "resellers" for the large companies. A
reseller buys up space on a server in a data centre
and then makes a small percentage profit by selling
web hosting on to end users.
All web hosting plans offer common basic features and
determining what your web hosting requirements are in
relation to these features can help greatly in the decision
making process.
Choosing the Server Type
Depending on how complex your website requirements are
will largely determine the choice of server you may
need. Simple websites should be fine on any server,
but more complex websites, such as those that generate
the web pages dynamically from a database, may have
specific needs and require software to be installed.
There are two main Web Server types. Most are based
on Unix or Linux server software as these tend to be
much cheaper, however Microsoft are also increasing
their presence with technologies wlike Windows Intenet
Information Server and .NET technologies.
Database driven websites often use mySQL databases
and need PHP, Perl or Python scripting languages to
be supported.
How much Disk Space do you need?
Is your website likly to include a large mySQL database
or just a few dozen html pages. Is your database likely
to grow substantially over time? If you are running
blogs, forums or systems that aquire images and data
then you need to allow room for growth.
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