Web Hosting 102.

A Beginner's Guide To Web Hosting - Part 2

So what exactly is "Hosting"? Well, from the above data, we know what a "server" is: it serves your website to whoever wants to see it. Well the term "Hosting" means storing your website on a server so that it can be accessed on the Web. Like a guest staying at a friend's house, your website stays on the "Host's" computer...hence the name: Hosting.

After knowing the above data, it is pretty easy to see the importance of having a responsive waiter..I mean server.

It is the responsibility of your server to locate, process, and send your page out quickly each time somebody wants to see it. If you have a slow server, your web page is slow. If your server is clogged with thousands of other websites, it will take longer to send it out. Your server's internet connection goes down for some reason, and there is no back-up, you website is down with it. Needless to say, if you are serious about having a website, the importance of a good server cannot be stressed enough.

Choosing a Good Web Host

Depending on your needs, there are many different types of web hosts on the market.

A "Dedicated Hosting" is when your website gets one single server all to itself. For many larger companies, this is the best solution because it offers the greatest security, reliability and flexibility. However, this is an expensive option, and because most people don't need that much space, this is not the best route.

"Shared Hosting" or "Virtual Hosting" is the most common type of hosting on the market. This is where several websites are stored on one computer. It is far more cost effective than dedicated hosting, yet still offers speed and reliability. We will expand on this later. Internet Simplicity.net hosting is "Shared Hosting."

We give "Free Hosting" a category of its own here, even though it is a type of shared hosting. Free hosting is where a provider puts hundreds or thousands of websites on each of their servers at no cost, and then uses those free websites as a marketing vehicle. Usually these websites have a banner ad across the top, or frequent pop-up ads advertising other's products while viewing your website. If you do not wish for your viewers to have pop-up and banner ads appear when visiting your site, free hosting would not be a good solution for you. Additionally, with a free host, speed, reliability and customer support are sacrificed for the sake of economics. Sophisticated applications such as mail forms, ecommerce applications and other interactive elements are rarely supported. Like the old saying goes, "nothing's for free." However, free hosting is truly at no cost, and if the above criteria are not of concern to you, this may be an option to take a look at.

To put all of this in more familiar terms: The "Dedicated Host," your website is living in a fully owned town-house and you have the ability to choose which amenities to build in the house. A "Shared Host" your website is living in an apartment where there are many nice amenities provided for you. A "Free Host" lives in the community center, with little to no amenities.

Choosing the Right Web Hosting Package for You

Diskspace

To relate back to out previous example, how big of home does your website need? How much diskspace does your website take up?

To give you a rough idea, one page of a website is typically 50K-100K (KiloBytes, also KB). Certain types of animation, and fancy interactive graphics can bring be up to 300K+ sometimes, and an average web-graphic (let's say it's about 4"x4" on your screen) will typically be about 10-15K. Text is practically nothing. This should give you a rough idea about how big your website actually is. There are many other things you can include on your site which will increase the size you will need: Applications, high quality images, audio, video, etc. However, we are only going into the basics here.

A web host will give you your Diskspace in terms of MB (or Megabytes, or "Megs"). There are 1000 KB (Kilobytes) in 1 MB. (So 100K = .1MB)

With this, you can calculate accordingly.

Bandwidth / Transfer

These two terms describe what happens when somebody actually accesses your website. When a user wants to see your website, let's say they type in your address: www.yoursite.com. What happens then, is server transfers the data from its hard drive, over the Internet to your computer. Terms "Transfer" and "Bandwidth" describe this process.

Web Hosts usually define the amount of transfer one is allowed in terms of GB (1000's of MB) per month. To figure this out, you are going to need to have a rough idea of how many people are going to access your site. The more people that access it, the more the servers will be transferring the data to their computers. (Conversion: 1000K=1MB's; 1000MB's=1GB) So a page that is 50K in size will be able to be viewed 20,000 times in a month to have 1GB of "transfer."

The term "bandwidth" is almost always used synonymously with "transfer" in the Hosting Industry; however, technically, the terms do have a slightly different definition. To give you the brief explanation, bandwidth is sometimes described as the amount of data that is being transferred per second (usually Kbps, or Kilobits per second) as opposed to the amount of total data transferred after one month. If you are looking for network equipment, you will see bandwidth used in this other way. To keep it simple, consider "Transfer" and "Bandwidth" the same for now.

Plan Features

It is common that many hosts include more advanced items as you move up in package price.

A Database in your website will allow you to store categorized data ( such as a list of names and addresses or a list of products) on your website. Viewers can then search for specific items within this database, such as a specific name or product. One can also store pictures in a database, and display those as well. Databases are very useful in many e-commerce applications.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is a commonly used encryption protocol (language) that is mandatory if one is conducting secure financial transactions or displaying private information online. In order for a website to use this type of encryption, SSL it has to be installed on the server that is hosting that website. Also needed with SSL is a Digital Certificate of Authenticity. The reason for this is that SSL verifies not only that there is not a third party spying on a transaction, but also that the website is authentic, and that the viewer's computer is who they say they are. Some hosts offer "Shared SSL" which means that they have a Digital Certificate which can be applied to all of the websites on their server if the website so chooses. However, many times, a website will want their own Digital Certificate.

Windows or Unix?

Hosts that advertising "Windows Hosting" or "Unix/Linux Hosting" are describing what type of operating system the SERVER is running on. Price-wise, Unix/Linux hosting is usually at a lower cost. The reason for this is that the host does not have to spend as much maintenance time as with a Windows server. The only time when choosing a server operating system becomes vital is when you start working with "Server-Side Scripting" or "Server-Side Programming". On some more advanced web pages, programs are used within the webpage code that are designed to run on the server itself before it reaches the client computer. Window servers typically support more scripts. (Typical Windows compatible scripts: .asp, asp.net, CFML. Other scripts: php, jsp, perl) If you get into Server Side Scripting, there is extensive data about this if you search on one of the major search engines.

Unix or Linux based servers are both very stable platforms for your website to be run on. Internet Simplicity Hosting uses the Linux operating system on their servers. To see a listing of the server-side scripting that Internet Simplicity supports, click here.

Which Hosting Company Is Right For You?

If you have been looking for a web host, you have probably noticed that there are many different hosts that offer many different packages at many different prices. One is bound to start spinning from all of the different offers out there! So that you can choose the right host for you, we have included an outline of some things to look for when comparing web hosts. This will explain why some hosts can offer the same package at cheaper prices and give you some information to "think with" when comparing prices:

What is their level of support? Are there actual people who can talk to you live and answer your questions?
(tip: if their rates are surprisingly low, their technical support is probably automated, or e-mail only.)
What are the specifications of their servers? (Processor speed, RAM)
What capacity are their servers running at? (i.e. are their servers filled to maximum capacity so that all the memory, and all the processing that their CPU can do is split between thousands of websites?)
Where are their servers stored? (i.e. The best web hosts store their servers in a secure data center which will protect your website from power outages, security breaches, and anything that will take it down)
How many back-up internet connections with different ISPs do your servers have?
What is their "uptime" guarantee? (the time your website will be "up" and viewable)
If they say they are up 99.9% of the time, do they have a GUARANTEE?
Do they offer a daily backup of your data?
Do they offer a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied?
What are their fees if you go OVER your monthly transfer limit?
How easy is it for you to upgrade to higher packages as your website grows?

If you have ever looked at reviews of different web-hosts, you can see that one of the most criticized areas is technical support. When looking at a webhost, one has to ask themselves: "At this monthly rate, does it make sense that a company could employ a technical support staff to answer all of my questions." If it doesn't add up, then the hosting company is probably going with an automated support route, which get mixed reviews at best. In summary, there are always the different market "niches" in any industry, and you can be sure that the very cheapest host will not offer the same quality of service as the most expensive. As cliche as it might be, the old truism "you get what you pay for" applies just as much in hosting as it does in other areas.

We hope that choosing a web host that is right for you has become a little bit easier as a result of reading this tutorial. Should you have any questions, or you have any comments or suggestions, please contact us. To visit our hosting packages, click here