What is Web Hosting?

Introduction to Web Hosting

Web Hosting is a service that allows others to view your website on the Internet. A web host offers space on their server to allow other computers worldwide to access your website via a network or modem. Providers of web hosting services have servers, connectivity, and related web hosting services.

There are literally thousands of web hosting services out there, from free facilities with limited optional services to costly, specific to specialized web hosting services. They cover the range of hosting needs from small blogs and major organizations by offering unique hosting programs.

How Does Web Hosting Work?

• You need to set up, store and sell your products if you want to start a business in the real world. Exactly the same thing in the digital world; the same rules apply when a website is created. In the websites, you have a number of files, images and HTML code in your website when you establish an online business. If you don’t have space online, then your data or file will not be set, and because of that, no one can see your domain on the internet.
• A hosting operator will store all your files on a server and will be responsible for supplying your site files once a browser requests to be sent by typing your domain name. Simply we can say that you rent storage space on the internet when you pay for hosting services – just like you would rent a physical store. While cPanel is a powerful tool that was used by most web hosters, it can be intimidating for non-technical users who simply want the site to work and operate quickly.
• In addition to providing your website with server space, hosting providers can offer other website-based services such as:
  1. Certificate of SSL.
  2. Page Builder.
  3. Live chat. (customer support services)
  4. Software install with one click. (Drupal and WordPress)

What is a Domain Name?

Let’s talk about domain names before we are moving to more depth. When you are starting or thinking about the online business, then first comes to mind is a domain which is your web address or company name. on the internet. For example, if you have a shop and someone wants to visit your shop, what will you do? You will provide the address to that person exactly the same if someone wants to visit your online business, then you will provide your domain name to her.

Whenever a person types your Domain Name, the hosting company transforms all the files connected to your IP address and returns all the images, videos and words on your website. Each domain name is unique as like your register address. Whenever you open a new website, you will be able to select a name that is a reflection of your brand.

Types of Web Hosting

Below are the different types of web hosting as follows:

• Shared Hosting
• VPS Hosting
• Dedicated Server Hosting
• Cloud Hosting
• WordPress hosting

1) Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common hosting type and is a perfect solution for the majority of small firms and blogs. It usually refers to shared hosting when you heard “web hosting.” Hosted websites on the same server share all their memory, computer storage, disk storage, and other resources. Shared hosting is user-friendly, which means no need to know the coding knowledge. The host is responsible for maintenance and server management. The benefit of shared hosting is that it is affordable because everyone pays equally for the server.

It can be as cheap as $2/month with the average cost in the $5-$10/month range. However, there are various disadvantages, such as many websites share the same server, which leads to having the same resources and slowing down the websites. i.e. On shared hosting, so many programs run at the same time.

If one website consumes more power due to increased traffic or faulty code, others have to face the problem of slowing down the loading speed or downtime, which means the website will not be reachable. This phenomenon called the “bad neighbour effect”.

2) VPS Hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server Hosting. However, you still share a server with other users; however, your web host gives you a separate partition on the server. You will have dedicated server space, as well as reserved computer power and memory. VPS hosting can be excellent for medium-sized enterprises with fast increasing websites.

VPS Hosting is easy in the scalability and also highly customize server. VPS provides more reliability and stability than shared hosting. It is usually limited to 10 to 20 websites per server. But this can be decreased based on the Server’s demand. Another advantage of this type of hosting is that if the limit of the website exceeds, then the server of that website may go down.

However, other servers will remain stable. This is achieved with the help of virtual machines that are responsible for separation within the server to overcome the problem of the bad neighbour effect. It also provides flexibility, i.e. the owner can customize his own environment without affecting others, unlike Shared web hosting, which applies changes to other’s environment at the same time.

3) Dedicated Server Hosting

A dedicated hosting type, the website owner has full control over the server on which the website is stored. i.e. the owner has complete admin and root access. Thus, it allows faster executions and high-level security, and all the resources are under the owner’s control.

One of the main advantages of dedicated hosting is that there is no problem of bad neighbour effect as no other websites are involved in using the website’s resources. Hence the owner can customize the environment efficiently.

This provides much more flexibility as the owner can choose the Operating system, hardware components type and space required for memory, etc. However, it comes with a price which means the owner will be paying for the server operations completely.

4) Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is currently, with no downtime, the most reliable solution on the market. It is the same as VPS hosting as in this type; virtual machines are used. Your host offers a cluster of servers with cloud hosting. Each server is replicated for your files and resources.

If one of the cloud servers is busy or issues, your traffic is routed to another server in the cluster automatically. It is more scalable as it combines several computers into a virtual server that can then provide its resources based on their requirements. Unlike VPS servers, as it can be scaled to a certain limit.

The owner has to pay for the resources he actually used and not for the whole resources. Another main advantage of cloud hosting is that it provides a higher security level because attacks like DDOS can be distributed among different computers and mitigate severe effects better than a single server system.

5) Word-Press Hosting

Word-Press Hosting is a little bite like Shared hosting, but this was created for WordPress sites owners. Your server is specifically configured to WordPress, and there are plugins installed for important items such as caching and safety on your site. Because your site is extremely optimized, it loads more quickly and runs less troubleshoot the problem.

Conclusion

It is a service that stores information about your website on a server. Your site cannot be online without it. The website domain name, i.e. the website address, is the main component in all website hosting. So in this article, we have seen what is web hosting and the types of web hosting. I hope you’ll find it helpful.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to What is Web Hosting?. Here we discuss the basic concept, how it works, and various types of hosting in detail. You can also go through our other suggested articles to learn more –

1. Types of Web Hosting
2. What is Hosting?
3. What is WordPress?
4. Cloud Hosting Providers