What is Web Hosting - Website Hosting

Your website needs to be online 24/7 and 7 days a week so that users can access your products / services or content. So this means the web hosting server has to be connected to internet 24 hours a day.

You will have to decide if you want free web hosting or paid web hosting which both have its pros and cons.

Some Free Website Hosting Cons

• You don't have your own domain name, but rather a subdomain e.g. www.someoneelsesite.com/yoursitename
• Disk space might be limited
• Bandwidth might be limited
• Annoying advertising, banners and popups
• No proper support

From over 10 years of website design experience I will recommend that you get paid hosting rather than free web hosting. There will be less headaches and problems for you especially if you have no website experience .

To get web hosting you will have 2 options:

Option 1 - Host your Site with a Web Hosting Company (Let the experts handle your site hosting)

I personally host all of my websites with web hosting companies. This is the easiest and popular way to host your website(s). By using a third party company to host your site will free you up to focus on developing your website from the conceptualization to monetization phases. It is also a good idea to leave the website hosting and security to professionals that specialises in web hosting.

The factors to consider when choosing a web hosting company:

• What is the hosting company's uptime? Some hosting companies guarantee 99+% uptime.
• The amount of disk space that you're going to need.
• The amount of bandwidth that you require per month for all the visitors that is going to visit your site.
• Does the hosting company support MySQL, PHP, SSL, FrontPage server extensions, Perl ... etc?
• How many domains can be hosted on one account?
• Domain name e-mail accounts which include auto responders etc.
• Will your site be hosted on a dedicated or shared server?
• Does your hosting company have Windows or Linux servers?
• How is the support structure of the hosting company?
• Secure Servers
• No long term contract

Not all of the web hosts have the same website packages with the same functionality.

Option 2 - Host your website at home with your own web server

This is not for the faint of heart because there are lots of factors to consider when hosting a website yourself. 

• Website uptime (24/7) internet connection
• Firewalls
• Web security
• Web server administrator skills
• Virus protection
• Backups 

You will need the proper equipment if you plan to host a dynamic CMS site like Joomla, WordPress, Oscommerce, Drupal, Virtuemart etc.

The equipment that you will need include:

• Web server (Apache server / ISS server)
• Databases (MySQL, SQL)
• Scripting (PHP, ASP)
• Antivirus software
• Backup tools
• 24 hour internet connection with your ISP

You will have to monitor your website 24/7 so it is better to rather let a web hosting company handle your web hosting. 

Get Paid web hosting here

It is a good idea to buy both your domain name and web hosting at one place. Lots of web hosting companies give you a FREE domain name when you sign up for web hosting. Get both below

Free domain name (.com) with annual web hosting. 99.99% Unix® uptime

Web Hosting Tutorials

Web Hosting Tutorial Lessons:

1. What is web hosting?
2. Different types of web hosting
3. Web Hosting with Domain Names
4. Technical Support
5. Up-Time
6. Databases
7. FTP File Managers
8. Choose a Web Hosting provider