Everything You Need to Know About Web Hosting

Before proceeding to understand what web hosting is all about, it will help if we construct a holistic view in a simple manner on the entire landscape.

In simple terms, you can regard web hosting as a provider of the server space where the website stays on the internet. Perhaps a simple analogy will make things more clear. If you regard your website as a house, then web hosting will be the plot of land where the house stands. And the domain name plays the role of the house address.

What is a Website?

It will be easier to grasp the things related to web hosting if we understand what a website is all about.

You can divide websites roughly into three categories:

A Collection of Pages: Every page is a file in a directory. When you click on a website link, the computer downloads the file from the directory and shows it to you.

Web Applications: Consider the example of the search engine, the email or the social media. What are these? These are called web applications.

Content Management Sytems: These are web applications that stimulate a collection of documents. For example, the blog, which is not an individual file; rather, it pulls content from a database and sends it to your browser as if it were a document.

In short, you can regard a website as a collection of files that are stored in a computer.

How Does it Work?

When you browse a website, you perhaps do not know what is happening. When you put the URL or the domain name on the bar at the top of the browser window, you send a request to the server. Your computer sends a request to the server for a page, a document or a file running an application. After receiving the request from the browser, the server sends back to the browser the file, web application of content management system conforming to the request. In short, the server responds to your request with some content, and the browser shows that to you.

Web Hosting Companies

As the name suggests, web hosting companies execute the responsibility of hosting websites. They do all the work for running websites. The companies put in place expensive and powerful computers called servers that are connected to fast internet connections.

Did you ever give a thought about what you get when you borrow a hosting plan? When you do so you borrow a portion of their computers--shared hosting--or the whole computer--dedicated hosting.

Web hosting companies provide fast, powerful computers so that anyone can run a website without having to spend on the hosting infrastructure or any specialized knowledge.

Types of Hosting

When you will set out to buy a hosting plan, you will find that many options are available. The following are those:

Shared Hosting

It is the most common form of hosting. And you might have rightly guessed that it is also the least expensive. Shared web hosting involves several customers sharing the same computer. Since the web hosting company allocates fewer resources, the expense is also less. In the server, the common drive stores all the websites of different customers. The same CPU process all the websites that are also delivered by the same web server.

Dedicated Hosting

When you take access to the entire server, it is known as a dedicated server. It is, however, an expensive option but has advantages too.

Taking a dedicated hosting entails many advantages that justify the higher cost. You get the flexibility to do many things, such as installing any software, changing the operating system, changing the configuration settings and so on. The flexibility arises due to your complete access to the server. And for specific applications, a dedicated server is a must. It would help if you had a dedicated server for running specific applications, such as an enterprise management system or building custom software.

Another significant advantage is that a dedicated server increases the speed and performance as you are the only one consuming the resources.

Virtual Private Server

A virtual private server (VPS) is something that comes in between a shared hosting and a dedicated hosting.

Notably, you have a virtual machine as a dedicated server and not a physical server. The virtual machine gives you a mix of advantages of both shared and dedicated hosting plans.

As with a dedicated server, you have complete control over the entire server with VPS hosting. Such controls are required in situations where you develop custom applications or run the software as a service (SaaS) business.

Even when it comes to the comparison of the VPS hosting with shared hosting, you are at an advantage with VPS hosting as you can access more server resources. With a VPS hosting, the service provider allocates a large portion of the entire computing power and bandwidth.

A remarkable advantage of VPS hosting is the lesser number of security issues. The virtualization layer, arising due to the VPS accounts having IP addresses, enables you to insulate your site from the problems that might arise from other websites on the server.

Managed Linux VPS Hosting

Among the popular VPS hosting services, the Managed Linux VPS Hosting is worth mentioning. To understand what it is, you need to know that it is also a virtual private server running on a Linux platform.

All web hosting plans fall under two categories--managed or unmanaged. The Managed Linux VPS Hosting comes under the managed category, in which the service provider is responsible for fixing all technical and other issues. Whereas, you do not get such services in unmanaged hosting.

Managed Linux VPS hosting entails a slew of benefits, such as:

Higher Security

Linux is a highly secure operating system. It is a perfect choice to guard your business against online threats. The high-security features in the Linux operating prevent malicious viruses and malware from entering into the system.

Cost-Effective

As Linux is a free operating system, you need not pay the license fees. So, it is a cost-effective option. Also, Linux offers many resources for your website.

Summary

In short, web hosting involves storing your website in a server that is managed by service providers. And with the availability of the hosting types, you need to access your business needs and affordability before you finalize a hosting type for your website.