Explanation of Web Hosting

Web hosting is a service that web hosting firms offer so that you can get your web site online.

How can people reach your site?

When you set up a web site and you want other persons to view it, you will need to publish (or upload) it to a server. If you try to render the site discoverable on the web by web hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it constantly up and running, which is why hosting services exist.

How does web hosting work?

Web hosting corporations offer you storage space for your website on their high-end computers (web servers) and ensure continuous Internet connection. When somebody writes your domain (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's address bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can explore the content of your website.

Web hosting varieties

With the advancement of web technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into being to fulfill the different needs of web site owners, among them shared website hosting services, virtual server hosting services and dedicated web hosting services.

Shared web hosting

Shared web hosting is the most commonly used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to begin with. It is a service where one single web hosting server is divided between many web hosting users who are limited by the CPU, traffic and hosting server disk drive storage space quotas that they have been apportioned. This type of website hosting is normally cheaper - you don't have to buy the whole web server in advance, as it is divided between lots of web hosting users, and the web hosting vendor can afford to provide much more affordable prices. It is also much easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the web hosting vendor takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates for you.

The weakness of the shared hosting solution is that you share the server's resources with other web hosting users and if one web site becomes very popular it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the web sites on that web hosting server, but the majority of web hosting companies, including us at Blue Domain Hosting, have protection platforms at work that obstruct that from occurring.

A definition of a website hosting service

Because shared hosting is the most common form of web hosting, most web hosting distributors and hosting customers simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. As there is an immense competition on the hosting marketplace, most hosting service providers strive to offer low prices and bonuses with their hosting services. We, for example, provide different website hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and annual, based on your funds. If you choose the yearly billing cycle, you will get a bonus - one cost-free domain name registration.

VPS web hosting

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated web server hosting solution. If your website grows beyond the resources offered by your shared website hosting account, a private virtual web server hosting package is a suitable option. VPS web server hosting clients still share the hardware resources of the physical machine with other private virtual server hosting account holders, but the hard disk is partitioned using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like an actual dedicated web server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a Virtual Private Server are not shared. In addition, the virtualization technology offers you much more autonomy to configure your virtual private hosting server, but it also calls for a higher level of technical competence.

Dedicated Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Web Hosting solution, the customer obtains an entire dedicated hosting web server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most flexible of all hosting solutions and offers numerous configuration possibilities - the dedicated server hosting customers can select the hardware and software specifications that will meet their demands. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are among the reasons why a dedicated web hosting server is an excellent choice for a large-scale corporate web site, for instance - you will not share the web server's system resources with anyone else and will obtain root access. You will have full authority over the machine, which will enable you to implement any server configuration modifications that you might need. The weakness of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a more advanced degree of technical know-how is needed - unless you hire an IT professional, it will be your duty to administer and configure the physical machine. The dedicated web hosting solution also costs far more, because the cost of the dedicated hosting web server isn't shared among any other clients.

A web hosting recommendation for beginner users

If you are just beginning to develop your site and are searching for a web hosting solution to start out with, the shared hosting solution persists to be the most appropriate choice. If your site outgrows your website hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and does not involve migration of your files, because only the features of your hosting account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting package to a more powerful one at any particular moment without having to worry about the number of days remaining before the expiration date. Additionally, if you finally reach the most advanced shared web hosting package and still require more system resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it signifies that your website's popularity has grown!), there always is the option to switch to a Virtual Private Server web hosting platform or a dedicated hosting platform without having to change hosting service providers.