What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a service that allows individuals and organizations to upload a website or web page to the Internet. A web host, or service provider for web hosting, is a business that provides the software and services need to access the website or website on the Web. Websites are host, or stor, on servers called special computers.
When Internet users want your website to be access, all they need to do is type your website address into their browser. Their computer will then connect to your server and deliver your web pages through the browser.
Most web hosting companies require you to own a domain name to host with them. If you don’t have a domain name, the web hosting firms will help you buy one.
The basic features of a web hosting plan include:
Disk Space
All web hosting accounts offer some disk space, which you can use to store your web files. It’s recommended you have some estimates of what you need for different tasks-how much space you need for your emails, web files, databases, etc. You will better determine how much space you should be searching for by breaking down your consumption.
Bandwidth or data transfer
Very often web hosts talk about bandwidth and data transfer as the same entity. However, they are in fact, different.
- Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred at one time.
- Data transfer is the actual amount of data transferred.
Think of it this way. If bandwidth were a tunnel, the bigger the tunnel the more cars can pass through it. Data transfer would then be the number of cars allowed to go through the tunnel in a given time period, say a month.
The less bandwidth you have, the slower it takes your website to load, regardless of your visitor’s connection type. Visitors will have to wait their turn. The less data transfer you have, the more often you will find your website unavailable because you have reached the maximum amount of data allowed to be transferred.
To determine what is enough, you need to take into consideration the size of your website and the number of visitors you have in a month’s time.
Email Accounts
Email accounts are a common feature of web hosting, particularly if a domain is hosting you. Three major types of email accounts exist: POP3, forwarding, and aliases.
The traditional Inboxes are POP3 accounts. You have room on the server to store your emails, and you can also use an email program to download your mail. That combination of logins and passwords usually amounts to one account.
Forwarding mail accounts are useful if you are employing the service of another company to filter your emails for you. Rather than storing your emails on your mail server, emails are redirect to another email address.
Aliases accounts are like forwarding mail accounts. Some hosts allow you to setup a catch-all alias, which is often use to collect emails sent to addresses not recognize by your mail server.
FTP Access
After you have created your web pages on your computer, you need to transfer those files to your web server. The files are transferred to the server by use of FTP.
FTP is also the protocol of downloading your web files from the server to your computer example backing up your website files.
