web hosting

A web hosting provider is in business to assist people and organizations to create their own sites and then make them accessible on the World Wide Web.

While it is possible to host your website on servers that you own (and we have, in the past), the vast majority of sites are hosted on the servers of hosting service providers because this is much easier and doesn’t require a major upfront investment to buy the server hardware and set it up.

The hosting service provider rents you space to store the website files and provides time on its computers to let interested people view the website. Plus, it provides administrative tools to let you make changes as needed.

The domain name (such as IMNewsWatch.com) is assigned to a particular connection (typically, one of many connections that service provider has) and linkage information is set up and spread around the world to Internet infrastructure sites, so wherever the end-user is in the world, he or she can connect to your site. (There is a caveat, of course, that countries that don’t want their citizens to connect with the outside world can usually block them from viewing your site.)

There are many different kinds of web hosting providers. Some of them specialize in particular kinds of services (for example, some specialize in hosting WordPress sites), while others offer a wide range of services.

In either case, your web hosting provider will charge a monthly fee for its services. (Some will give you a discount if you prepay for a year or more in advance.)

There are four major types of hosting accounts that hosting companies offer:

Shared Hosting

In these accounts, several (in some cases, a large number of) websites share the same server resources and, most importantly, share an IP address.

The hosting company attempts to fairly divide the disk space, the machine time, and other resources among the websites. If one site ues more than its fair share, the other sites will slow down. The hosting company keeps an eye on this and tries to quickly stop this overuse whenever it happens.

The second issue that comes with choosing a shared hosting account is the possibility of being on a server with a rogue website (one dealing in scams, porn, hate messages, etc.) When this happens that IP is designated as a “bad neighborhood”, and all sites on that IP address are tainted by the rogue site, being suspected of a connection with its nefarious activities.

Because of these problems, hosting companies found a market for a second type of hosting.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

With a VPS, your site still shares a server with other sites, but your site has its own private IP address, not shared with other sites on the server. You are in your own “gated community”, where you won’t have any rogue sites sharing your virtual server. (You can host several of your own sites on the VPS, but you are in control of which sites are there.)

The hosting company uses software to make one physical server computer look and act like many, each private and supporting only one user. Your server is “virtual”, not physical because a single physical server computer is divided into several virtual ones.

Despite its being only virtual, you can do nearly everything with it that you could do on a physical server.

Dedicated Server

Dedicated hosting (on a physical private server) is another option. In this case, you have exclusive use of a physical server. This has both advantages and disadvantages.

The major disadvantage is that if your hardware breaks, it’s a real problem on a real computer, and your site will break, too, and become unavailable. Your site will be unavailable until the hardware is fixed or replaced.

The second problem is that you sign up for a particular level of service and that is what is built into your dedicated server:
• A certain amount of disk storage for your data
• A certain amount of active memory where your programs operate
• A certain quantity of data sent to your site’s visitors.
• A certain amount of CPU computing power.

Your physical hardware has the agreed-to amount of all these resources. What happens if you get more people coming to the site than your dedicated server can handle? Your site slows down or comes to a halt.

It’s these two problems that are the primary driver for the fourth type of hosting, Cloud Hosting, discussed below.

In dedicated hosting, you may own the server and place it in a hosting company’s computer center, or the hosting company may rent you the whole server, not just a VPS portion of it.

You will get more control over your server since there are no other customers on the server, competing for its resources. You have everything that is built into the server at your disposal. Of course, you will pay more money for this exclusive use.

Otherwise, it acts like a VPS.

Cloud Hosting

In cloud hosting, the hosting company assigns you to one of their clouds, networks of multiple computers interconnected by wires and software so they normally operate as though they were a single computer.

The advantage is that the software can respond instantly if one of the computers in this network breaks. The work being done on that computer is invisibly moved to another computer networked with the broken one.

The second advantage is that you don’t have to buy and pay for a high level of resources just to handle occasional bursts of activity on your site. If you are planning to release a new product and expect that will cause a surge of activity on your site, you can scale up your resources just for the time you will need them and then return to your normal level after the rush of traffic dies down. This keeps down your expenses so you only pay for what you need.

In conclusion

Based on your budget and the strength of your need to avoid any glitches, breakages, reputation damage, and downtime, you will be choosing from these four types of hosting. (If you run a major corporation [we suspect you don’t], you could invent some hybrid with special bells and whistles, other than one of these four. There would be some hosting company, no doubt, willing to work on those special requirements.)

There are minor variations on the specifics of these four major types, but this will give you the background to check our individual hosting companies to see what added frills they offer and what they charge for those frills.

We will plan a second installment of this overview to talk in more detail about specific offerings that the various major hosting companies offer small businesses.

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