Cheap Web Hosting

It is an indisputable fact that there is a great boom in information today due to the revolution that is the internet. There is information on everything that is pertinent to our lives – from the physical to the spiritual, from ideas to actual fact, and on anything that might cross your mind. There is information available from experts, libraries, business houses, corporate houses and just everyday people. Photographs, images, videos, movies, music, mail, are also freely available. All this information is for everyone’s use. This is the beauty of the web. There is nothing so insignificant that you cannot get some information on it from the internet. A lot of information is free. Maybe you will have to pay for specialised information, but most of the time it is available at the click of the mouse.

Today, we are in an age when even books are available online both in text and audio versions. You can download a whole book in your home. Great universities have their entire libraries digitalised. Movies are available. You don’t have to rely on the postal system at all. Railway line tickets, airline bookings and even hotel reservations can all be done from your comfortable seat at home. Getting to know about places far away from home is not an impossibility any more. For the common person, e-mail is possibly the greatest advantage. Not only for mail, but business deals can be struck on the net, application forms can be filled out online and sent – the possibilities are endless. Now, even shopping can be done online. This is a marvelous advantage for many people,especially those in remote locations. Naturally a storage system was required for all this information, and this is where web hosting comes into play.

Every day more and more information is added to the internet. This, however, has to be accessible to browsers and everyday users. Web hosting is not only for big players. Even small players find it a very useful and necessary service. There is not a corner in the world which the net has not accessed. The beauty is that there is something for everyone in the world and the internet opens this up for everyone to access. Fascinating too is the fact that all this can be shared. We see that there are ongoing debates that take place and games that can be played in virtual games rooms. Should you want first-hand information on something, you can post your question and get a personalised reply to it. Web hosting is the online service that makes all this possible. This is a service that allows you to have your website, blog or podcast accessible on the world wide web.

The web hosting service makes it possible for users to access any data they so wish by providing reliable space, bandwidth and the infrastructure needed. Web hosting services also make it possible for individuals and organisations to have their own website via the world wide web so that the information they have is accessible to everyone. Web hosts are companies which own a server, and they provide space on this server for their clients to use. They also provide Internet connectivity in a data center. Web hosts sometimes provide data center space along with connectivity to the Internet in their data center for servers that they do not own. This is called colocation.

The services that are offered by web hosting plans vary greatly. Web page hosting is the most basic, along with small-scale file hosting where the uploading of files takes place via the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are delivered to the Web "as is" or maybe with a little processing. There are many Internet service providers (ISPs) who offer their subscribers this service free of charge. You can get Web page hosting from other service providers as well. Personal website hosting is very cheap or even free if you are happy to have it sponsored by advertisements.

Business web site hosting used to be very expensive but has experienced dramatic price reductions of late. For personal web pages, single page hosting is more than enough. A complex site will need a more comprehensive package that will provide database support and an application development platform. Examples of this are PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion and ASP.NET. Scripts for applications (forums and content management) can be written or installed by the customers on these facilities. SSL is highly recommended for e-commerce. A control panel or interface may be provided by the host to manage the Web server and for installing scripts. Services like e-mail are also provided by them.

Hosting uptime is the percentage of time the host is available through the internet. Providers claim that they aim for a minimum of 99.9% uptime as 100% is never possible. Hosting environments are likely to have server restarts, and either planned or unplanned maintenance at some time or the other. Uptime and accessibility may be included in their Service Level Agreement (SLA) by providers. These might include refunds or reduced costs in case performance objectives are not met.

Web hosting services are of the following kind:

1) Free web hosting service: As the name suggests, this service is free, sometimes advertisement-supported and limited as compared to what is offered by paid hosting. For small sites with low traffic like family sites or hobby sites, free web hosting may well be sufficient for the task. Not too many technical options are available and technical support is normally limited. The downside of free web hosting is that you normally cannot use your own domain name. You have to use the name given by your host which is often long and hard to remember.

2) Shared web hosting service: This is very cost effective and quite common. With shared hosting you place your website on the same server along with many other websites. Server resources like RAM and CPU may have to be shared by all the domains. Each website will have their own domain name. Multiple software solutions such as e-mail, database and many different editing options are offered by shared hosting. You get good technical support as well. Shared hosting is good for small business that receive an average amount of traffic. The downside is that there might be restrictions on database and software support.

3) Virtual dedicated hosting service: Here the server resources are divided into virtual servers. Thus the resources are allocated in such a way that it is not reflected on the hardware. Virtual Private Servers allow users to have their own virtual space. VPS is often allocated resources such that one server can be used by many users. Patching and maintaining the server will be the responsibility of the customers.

4) Dedicated hosting: With this hosting your web site is hosted on a dedicated server, but you cannot have full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows). You can manage your data via FTP or any other remote management tool. Because you do not have full control, the provider guarantees quality of service. The user does not own the server, they lease it. This hosting service is good for large websites with high traffic and also for websites that use special software. Thus there are multiple domain names. Dedicated hosting is very powerful and secure, and has unlimited software solutions. Email solutions are powerful as is database support. This is an expensive form of hosting.

5) Colocation web hosting service: this is like the dedicated web hosting service, but the colo server is owned by the user. The physical space is provided by the hosting company. The server takes this space. The hosting company takes care of the server, providing high-security against fire, and vandalism, regulated back-up power and dedicated Internet connections to name a few resources that they would provide. This would be like running your own server from your office. The collocation provider may provide little or no support for their client, other than electrical Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. The client, thus, would have to have his own administrator visit the data centre, and oversee any hardware upgrades or changes. However, they do provide high bandwidth and high uptime. This is the most expensive type of web hosting.

Other kinds of hosting are Clustered hosting, Grid hosting, Home server, and Reseller web hosting. There is application specific web hosting such as Blog hosting, Guild hosting, Image hosting, Video hosting, Wiki farms, application hosting, Social network hosting, Game server hosting and e-mail hosting. Before choosing your web host, check that it suits your needs; if it is cost effective; if it can be upgraded to a better server when required; and if it can be upgraded to a dedicated server. In any case, before you choose the host, you must know all about what it entails and what services they offer. Knowledge of web hosting will help you to choose wisely. Contact as many web hosts as possible and compare what they have to offer. Technical and database support are two things that you will need to check on carefully.

The best value web hosting provider is Lunar Pages. For only $4.95 US per month Lunar Pages give you unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth per month, a free domain name, PHP, JSP, ASP & Perl, and FTP access. They also offer toll-free telephone support. You are also able to host multiple domains meaning you only need the one package to support multiple websites.

One important thing that you need to keep in mind is whether you will get good customer support. This is extremely important. Not everyone is tech-savvy and there will be times when you will come across a problem. At this time, it is timely customer support that is crucial to you. Should you desire to create your own personal home page, where private information about you is included, you will not need a lot of bandwidth or disk space, so accordingly choose the web hosting package that fits the bill. There are companies that offer a personalized service which is highly professional. They help you create your website, and give you tips on how to maintain your page.

A very attractive idea of managed web hosting service is the idea of independence. Since you control the server activity for your website, you don’t have to worry about downtimes. You also do not need to worry about competing traffic. Should you want to accommodate higher traffic, you can enlarge the existing bandwidth. You can also use your own control panel to change features on the site to suit your current vision and needs. The best and most effective hosting services will include some form of security protection like password-protected access and the use of SSL certificates. Security is another major concern when looking at cheap web hosting packages.

There may be problems at times, but 24/7 customer support is a great feature that can manage to sort it out. The best cheap web hosting packages will offer great features, and you need to know all about them. It would be a good idea to start with a cheap web hosting package and as you learn more about its advantages and use, you can upgrade to another plan at a later stage. With web hosting you become a true member of the world community.