Explanation of Web Hosting

Web hosting is a service that hosting distributors provide so that you can get your web site online.

How can people view your web site?

When you build a site and you wish other individuals to observe it, you will have to copy (or upload) it to a web server. If you try to render the web site visible on the World Wide Web by web hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it online all the time, which is why website hosting services appeared.

How does web hosting work?

Web hosting providers offer you disk space for your site on their high-powered computers (servers) and guarantee constant network uptime. When someone types your web site address (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's address bar, they will be connected to the server where they can take a gaze at the content of your site.

Types of web hosting

With the development of Internet technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into being to meet the various demands of website possessors, among them shared web hosting services, private virtual server hosting services and dedicated server web hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared website hosting is the most commonly used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where one single server is divided among many web hosting account owners who are limited by the CPU, web traffic and web server space quotas that they have been apportioned. This form of hosting is typically cheaper - you don't have to purchase the entire server upfront, as it is divided among numerous customers, and the web hosting solutions provider can afford to provide much cheaper prices. It is also easier to use - the web server is pre-installed with all the required software and the web hosting distributor handles all server maintenance procedures and software updates on your behalf.

The drawback of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the server's system resources with other web hosting account owners and if a given site becomes very popular it may affect (and slow down) all the other websites on that hosting server, but most hosting firms, including us at Zasta Hosting, have security systems at work that obstruct that from happening.

A definition of a hosting service

Since shared hosting is the most commonly used form of web hosting, the majority of hosting vendors and hosting clients simply refer to it as hosting or website hosting. As there is a huge competition on the web hosting market, most hosting firms strive to provide modest prices and gifts with their hosting services. We, for example, provide different hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your funds. If you select the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a gift - one free-of-charge domain registration.

VPS web hosting

VPS is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated server web hosting solution. If your web site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting plan, a virtual server web hosting plan is an excellent solution. private virtual web server hosting account holders still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS hosting users, but the hard disk drive is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a private virtual server are not shared. Moreover, the virtualization software offers you much more freedom to configure your VPS web server, but it also calls for a higher level of technical know-how.

Dedicated Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Web Hosting solution, the customer gets an entire dedicated server and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated server web hosting solution is the most robust of all website hosting solutions and offers tons of customization possibilities - the dedicated web hosting users can pick the hardware and software specifications that will satisfy their requirements. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated web hosting plan is a perfect choice for a heavy resource-absorbing business website, for instance - you will not share the hosting server's system resources with anyone else and will acquire full server root access. You will have full control over the physical server, which will enable you to make any server configuration modifications that you might need. The setback of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical proficiency is needed - unless you hire an Information Technology professional, it will be your obligation to manage and configure the physical server. The dedicated server hosting solution is also far more expensive, because the cost of the dedicated server isn't shared between any other customers.

A website hosting tip for novices

If you are just beginning to build your site and are seeking a website hosting solution to start out with, the shared hosting solution persists to be the smartest choice. If your website grows beyond your web hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your website files, since only the features of your web hosting account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting plan to a more powerful one at any particular time without having to worry about the time left before the expiration date. Additionally, if you finally reach the most advanced shared website hosting plan and still need more system resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it suggests that your web site's popularity has risen!), there always is the possibility to switch to a private virtual server web hosting platform or a dedicated server web hosting platform without needing to switch web hosting providers.