Web Hosting 101

When it comes to building a website, you will need to select a web hosting company to publish your website to the World Wide Web. Prior to doing so, you'll need to know the basics such as, "What type of web host services are available? Which is best for you? Most of the questions will be answered here as we give a breakdown of the various services in common English language. This is the information you've been loking for...

Clustered Web Hosting
The set up provides multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered Servers are the perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution.

Colocation Web Hosting
This type of web hosting is similar to dedicated web hosting service; the difference is, the user owns the colo server and the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most robust and also most expensive type of the web hosting service.

In the majority of cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no tech support directly for their client's machine. Normally, all they provide is the electrical power, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. Meaning, the client must have his own network administrator to service, monitor, upgrade and troubleshoot any hardware upgrades or changes.

Dedicated Web Hosting

The user gets his or her own web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, typically the web hosting company owns the server.

Dedicated Web Hosting Managed

Managed Web Hosting is a form of web hosting in which a client chooses to lease an entire server housed in an off-site data center that is dedicated to their uses only. They don’t share the server with anyone else as in a shared web hosting environment. Managed web hosting gives the client complete control over the server and provides them with maximum usage of the hardware, processor speed and bandwidth capacity. A client is given the option to choose their preferred operating system, Windows or Linux, as well as optional managed services like security patches, upgrades, backups, and firewalls. With most web hosts, basic system administration is included with managed hosting. 

Dedicated Web Hosting Self-Managed

Self-Managed web hosting is a form of web hosting in which a client chooses to lease an entire server housed in an off-site data center that is dedicated to their uses only, and not sharing it with anyone else as in a shared hosting environment. In contrast to Managed Hosting, the client must be have technical know-how, and perform all system administration and management activities on the server, usually from a remote desktop. This lets the client choose a server with more powerful hardware for much less cost. As with Managed Hosting, the client has complete control over the server and can choose their preferred operating system, Windows or Linux.

Free Web Hosting
Remember the saying, “You get what you pay for?” With free web hosting, this is quote can never be truer. With almost all free web hosts, your bandwidth and options are limited. In addition, since you are not paying, the web host generates income by placing advertisements on your website. The only way to remove the ads is to become a paying customer.

Grid Clustered Web Hosting

Grid web hosting, also called clustered web hosting is technology designed to eliminate problems inherent with typical shared hosting infrastructures. Grid technology provides customers with a “clustered” handling of security, load balancing, and necessary website resources. Clustered hosting provides considerable advantages over traditional hosting architectures in mitigating denial-of-service attacks and other network attacks because such attacks can be dispersed over a large pool of servers, and if individual hardware components are impacted by such attacks, they automatically fall out of traffic handling during the attack.

Home Server

This is usually a single machine, (commonly a standard PC) placed in a private residence that is used to host one or more websites from a consumer-grade broadband connection. More likely than not, this setup is a techie trying his hand at web hosting.

Reseller Web Hosting

This facet of web hosting allows a person to become a web host themselves. They usually have their own virtual dedicated server or colocated server with a web hosting company.

Shared Web Hosting

This is when one website is placed on the same server with other websites. This arrangement can range from a few websites to hundreds, to thousands. Typically, all the domains on that server will share the same resources, (i.e., RAM, CPU, etc,).

Virtual Dedicated Server Web Hosting

These are also known as virtual private servers or VPS. This is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers. Each virtual server has the appearance and capabilities as if it is running on its own dedicated machine. Each VPS can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted. The benefits of Virtual Private Servers are manifold; they cost less than physical dedicated servers. They give full control and independence from the other customers on the server and they bridge the gap between dedicated hosting services and shared web hosting services.

To Your Success

Joe Elliot - YouBuildWebsites.com

Better known as “Average Joe”
I’m Not an Internet Guru