Wednesday, October 28, 2009

What is web hosting or web space?

Author: Robert Bell
The answer in simple human language is this:

Web Hosting (web space)is a term used to describe a physical location where your website is or will be stored. In reality every website is nothing but a bunch of computer files with certain code in them. all together all them files, when run properly produce what you see if you go to a www location in your browser.

So just as a common sense would suggest, files that create your website, obviously have to be stored on some computer's hard drive. Just like you have files on the computer you're using right now. Therefore Web Hosting is simply a company that provides their computers to store your web files on them.


Now for all of you skeptics out there who may raise an objection- then why can't I simply store web files on my own computer instead? the answer is you can. and you should, if you have three things:

1. good internet connection (with great upload speed)

2. reliable computer or server (that will run 24/7/365, i.e. all year around, so your clients can access it anytime)

3. Basic or preferably extensive server knowledge, just in case something goes wrong (and it will)

if you don't have these web hosting is the way to go. Web hosting companies usually have and offer all three at quite affordable price. Usually web hosting company is running their web servers (host computers) non stop. they literally never turn them off. Unlike the computer you have at home, which sometimes goes out or your Internet connection is down, web servers are more reliable and are constantly supervised and attended in case something does goes wrong.

Some things to look for when buying web hosting are:

1. Hard Disk Space.

Due to very affordable hard drive prices, nowadays lots of web hosting companies offer unlimited space, that is you can store as many files on it as you want. Or worst case scenario you get plenty of space (1-5 terabytes) which is really plenty, unless you plan to run a site where you're going to store lots of videos.

2. Traffic

This means amount of information your site will be allowed to send in or out. If you plan to run a site where you will offer lots of downloads or lots of video or audio streaming, it would be wise to consult with someone with more expertise to determine the exact amount of traffic you will be getting. For regular websites widely offered traffic amounts are more than enough really.

3. Number of hosted domain names

This number determines how many different domain names you will be able to host on your hosting. That is if you only have one. That means you will only be able to have one domain name to drive people to your site. i.e "www.yourdomain.com". that doesn't mean you can't have more websites on your hosting. You can if you use don't mind setting up your sites on sub-domains which could look like this: "subdomain1.yourdomain.com"

4. number of email accounts. This number usually shows how many email accounts you are able to create on your hosting account.

5.FTP Accounts

number of FTP Accounts that can be created on your hosting account. (FTP -File Transfer Protocol, is a way of connecting to the remote computer with the intent to transfer some files to or from it)

6. Price.

Some are high, some are low. Good rule of thumb is to read reviews of people who use it or have used it and have voiced their comments or concerns. Ultimately, you always get what you pay for. So use your common sense!

Elite-Webspace hosting (http://www.elite-webspace.com) gives you all those things and more. As a bonus there is a library of free scripts, like joomla, drupal, classified directory, wiki and others you can install on your site in a matter of seconds as well as get free domain.

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