Web Hosting

Web hosting is a service provided by a company (web host) that places your website on a server which is connected to internet 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Types of web hosting includes

Free web hosting Might be considered for small websites ready to compromise with performance and relaibility of the web server. Also, most of the free web hosts require you to display advertisements on your website in the form of banners or pop ups.

Shared web hosting Most of the web host offer shared web hosting at low monthly fee usually less than $10 per month where your site would be placed with many other sites on the same server. This is a good option for most of the web sites that do not require any eCommerce functionalities on their web sites. Generally they offer unlimited disk storage and unlimited bandwidth.

Dedicated web hosting This type of web hosting is good for highest performance and reliabilty and must for eCommerce websites that collect confidential user information like credit cards using SSL technology. Ofcourse comparitively expensive than shared web hosting.

Factors to be considered while looking for web hosting includes

Type of Connection There might be different backbone connections like T-1, T-3, OC-3, OC-48, OC-256 etc. Type of connection effects data transfer at higher speed.

Disk storage Disk space needed for storing your web pages on the web server. Some web hosts put a limit on disk storage while others offer unlimited storage.

Bandwidth It represents amount of data transfered from web server to visitors browser usually has monthly limit.

Email accounts You might need email accounts like "tom@yoursite.com" on your website. This might range from few to hundreds of email accounts.

Database architectures Many dynamic websites require backend database to run their program. It is important to know what database arhitecture is available with your web host to meet your requirements. MySQL is the most common database architecture available with most web hosts.

Type of operating system Type of operating system web server has might be important depending on type of web pages or server technology prefernce one might have or database architecture prefered.

Scripting language support It is important to check for scripting language support e.g. perl, php, ruby etc available with web host as many applications require use of server scripting language.

customer support It is good to have 24/7 customer support with your web host just in case if you are running mission critical applications on your site.