What is Website Hosting?
Are you having trouble understanding website hosting? Well, it is not that technical that you can’t learn! Website hosting is an online service that enables an individual, business, or company to go live on the internet. To put the term in plain words, web hosting allows your website to secure a position in the search list on the internet to your potential customer. Basically, when you are purchasing web hosting service from a company, you are taking the rent of that company’s physical server. This allows you to store your data, images, videos and etc. of your website. So whenever someone searches for your website on the internet that server provides results and loads the whole website from that server.
Typically, website hosting can be measured in the amount of disk space you are allowed to use so it varies based on the nature of the website. For instance, you have a website or creating a new website where there will be the user’s interactions such as downloading multimedia elements (image, video or any large file), then that website will require more space in the server than the website which simply puts readable files on their website. Based on the assumption regarding the file size and user interaction you need to purchase space on the server. Simply, the more space you will procure for you website, the more data you will be able to restore against your website.
How Website hosting Works:
When you decide to go live on the internet with your website, first you need to choose and purchase hosting plan which meets all of your requirements following your budget. Till now, your website is just a collection of different files but as soon as you will upload those files on the server you will get easy access to your server with cPanel hosting. With this cPanel, you will be able to upload or manage your files to the server. Other than cPanel, nowadays many use Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress to build their website and go live on the internet.
After your purchase your web hosting service, you will also get other services that come with that plan, such as:
- Free SSL certificates
- Email hosting and page builders
- Developer tools
- 24/7 customer support service
- Automated website backups
- Free Migration from other hosting company
- Daily backup
- WordPress One-Click Instalation
Types of Web Hosting
There are many web hosting packages out there and each hosting caters different services according to your website needs. Before purchasing your web hosting you need to consider your website needs, budget and types of service that the package is offering you. For instance, if you look at a site that gets millions of visitors per month will have different requirements than a site that was built a few weeks ago.
Here is the list of different types of Web Hosting Services:
- Shared Web Hosting Package:
Shared website hosting package is one of the most common packages among the small business because of its cheap rate as well as the services come with this package almost the same as other packages. By shared web hosting means, you are sharing the physical server space with other users. Usually, shared website hosting package is preferable to the new websites or newbies to get started.
To understand closely here is an example, suppose the server is like your computer and its hard drive is partitioned into different drives containing different files. For instance, you named one of the partitioned drives with your name and your sister named her drive with her name. Though both of you are using the same computer, each one of you has a particular drive for you. Similarly, with shared web hosting service you are just splitting server resources with other users of the same server your costs will be very low.
- VPS Hosting
The term VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The name of the server is quite self-explanatory. This form of web hosting service allows your website to use dedicated servers but your resources will be kept into different servers. This means you are still using shared server but as your files kept and optimized from different servers it will always allow your website to run like hosted from a single or dedicated server.
- Cloud Hosting
Ever since cloud hosting introduced, it gained mass popularity because of its unique characteristics and more convenient for heavy loading website. In the simplest way, cloud hosting refers to web hosting which engages different servers at a time to reduce the maximum load of the website and make the website more user friendly.
Another important factor is that when you are using cloud hosting for your website you are actually using many servers at a time which means you will get way more bandwidth than the other hosting especially shared hosting. Besides, there is no way to worry about the hamper of your data as cloud hosting intend to keep your data connected to multiple servers.
It is mentionable that, to manage cloud hosting properly you need to have certain knowledge on this hosting package, because while using it you may have to manage it efficiently.
Till the day, WordPress hosting has become more popular ranging among small businesses to large business organizations owing to its easy and hassle-free experience. Generally, WordPress hosting comes with many compatible features to improve the site’s loading speed without reducing its quality. Though WordPress uses some shared hosting, it has particular hosting units that are primarily made for WordPress. Other than the mentioned web hosting packages, WordPress hosting has many advantages, for instance, it costs cheaper and most importantly it is also a beginner user friendly. Also, most of the web hosting companies provide one-click WordPress installation, pre-installed WordPress plugins and themes and many other features.
On the other hand, WordPress hosting sometimes creates trouble when it comes to host more than one website at a time but it is soluble.
In conclusion, website hosting is a must if you want to go online with your website. Finding best web hosting nowadays is really troublesome but it is important to choose the best and suitable hosting for your website. It matters because this indeed your business identity online which has a huge impact on your business.