What is Hosting?

If you have decided to launch your very own personal web site, but are not very sure about what a website is and are not familiar with the term "hosting", this article is devoted to clarifying these notions in simple language.

What exactly is a website?

A website is a combination of webpages assembled systematically. It has a unique web site address, also known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). A website may consist of just one single webpage and sometimes may even contain as many as a thousand web pages.

What is a hosting server?

A web hosting server permits you to upload your site onto it. In some cases, there might be even 1000's of websites on one single hosting server. The web hosting server essentially is a computer with specific hardware, which is located in a datacenter facility with special cooling systems, whose purpose is to ensure the seamless functioning of the server and all the web sites located on it.

To summarize, a hosting server will be indeed a launching pad when the time comes for you to launch your website. It could be any kind of web site - a corporate web site consisting of a large number of webpages, or a site, which includes only a couple of pages and which you have built simply for your friends and relatives.

You've decided what your web site will be, now what?

Once you have reached a decision about what kind of web site you wish to set up, the next move is to discover what sort of web hosting service you must pick for your web endeavor. Essentially, there are two kinds of web hosting services - free-of-cost website hosting services and professional paid hosting services. The free-of-charge website hosting solution is ordinarily used by customers that do not own a business-related site.

Positive and negative aspects of the free-of-charge web hosting solution

You will not obtain lots of features with a free web hosting package. Features like traffic, RAM memory and hosting server disk space are limited and insufficient for a complex e-store or a business web site, or even for a website with a lot of artwork. Additionally, there are a lot of banner adverts embedded on your site by the hosting vendor. These ads take up a lot of space on your web site and are rather frustrating.

Shared hosting

The paid shared hosting services tend to be more reliable and include plenty of sophisticated features beside the high-end hosting server that will host your site and its data. However, it is important to know which features your website needs before purchasing your web hosting plan. You should not hurry and end up spending cash on something that your web site does not demand.

Find your hosting supplier

It is not difficult to find a web hosting solutions provider. You need to just conduct an online search in order to find a web hosting vendor that answers your website's needs. Before you take your actual decision, explore the parameters of the hosting packages provided by the web hosting suppliers that have caught your interest. We, for example, are among the leading website hosting providers on the marketplace at the moment. The broad range of web hosting services and our prices are what renders us an enthralling option. However, you must verify what kind of hosting solution you need and whether the price matches your budget. In addition, you must always remember to go through the hosting company's Terms of Use before registering to confirm that your web site is not abusing them.

Opening a website hosting account

As soon as you have found out what features are ideal for your web site, the next step is to open an account with the web hosting company of your choosing. You will have all the necessary tools for managing your web site files and databases. With us, for example, you will acquire a web hosting Control Panel, which is comprised of domain, web site, database and e-mail administration areas. You log into the Control Panel using your unique user name and password, which gives you secure access to the portion of the hosting server where your website will be located.

Uploading your website

You can either upload your web site through an FTP client application or, as is with the majority of web hosting companies, through a web-based tool that is integrated within the Control Panel. With us, the File Manager is quite intuitive and offers features comparable to those found in Windows Explorer, which renders file manipulation extremely easy. We offer also a web site building tool and a PHP-powered script installation tool, which you can utilize to build your web site if you have no programming experience and are making your first steps in web design. The online site builder, called SiteStudio, will also save you the time and effort of making a web site on your personal computer and then uploading it using an FTP client application or the File Manager interface.