Free or paid web hosting?

Written by Petr Sejba


Just finished your first website? So it'srepparttar time to look for some hosting and make a choise. Your first qustion probably will be whether to choose free or paid hosting service. Let's have a look at some advantages and disadvantages of these solutions.

Free web hosting: (+) It's for free. You don't need to pay for domain name. (-) Your URL will be something like http://username.freehost.com or http://freehost.com/username. As I noticed above,repparttar 134350 advantage is that you don't need to pay for domain. But note that if you move your website to another provider inrepparttar 134351 future you can loose some or all your traffic (there are some solutions how to solve this problem but it is notrepparttar 134352 point of this article). (-) Your provider will probably include ads to your pages - usually 1 or 2 banners, sometimes popup windows. If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn't allow it. (-) Free hosts usually allow lower bandwith then paid hosts and a lot of them don't offer futures like PHP and MySQL. (-) A lot of free hosts change their Terms and conditions during some time. If your free host offers hosting wihtout ads now, don't be surprised when banner or popup appears on your site inrepparttar 134353 future. (-) Sometimes happens that free hosts cancel their free service and longer offer paid hosting only. In this case you have only 2 choises - pay them or loose your website.

Web hosting Basics

Written by Steve Ashton


So you're about to embark on your first web project and you're wondering where on earth to start? Well, one ofrepparttar first things you'll need is a web hosting package. There are so many out there it can seem daunting to try and choose one. In this article we'll teach yourepparttar 134349 basics to help you make an informed decision.

What is Web Hosting?

For people to actually view your pages onrepparttar 134350 web, you must have your files located on a "web server". When they visit your site, what they are actually doing is viewing those files. You can rent a little bit of space onrepparttar 134351 web server, or if your site is large, rent an entire server for your site. Each server is assigned an IP address. This is a four number address that is separated by dots. i.e. 127.0.0.1 Every domain name actually points to an IP address and this is how visitors access your files onrepparttar 134352 web server.

Once your site is hosted on a webserver, it can be viewed by any computer inrepparttar 134353 world through a web browser. All they need to do is type in your domain name to view your web pages. Your site must be hosted on a web server before it will be available to external visitors.

What is a Web Host

A Web Host is a company that owns and maintains webservers withrepparttar 134354 purpose of hosting web sites. You rent space from these companies and in return they will maintain and servicerepparttar 134355 server. Part of this entails keepingrepparttar 134356 server software current, applying any security patches and ensuringrepparttar 134357 site is always available, known as 'uptime'. To achieve peak performance, these servers are normally housed in specialist 'datacenters' with dedicated high speed connections to ensure that website loading speeds are as high as possible. A lot of web hosting companies will rent space in a large datacenter to save costs.

Web Host companies come in all shapes and sizes, from large multinational telecommunications companies to joe bloggs downrepparttar 134358 street with a server in their office. A number of web hosting companies will include a lot of other services to make them a one-stop shop to get yourself onrepparttar 134359 web. This could include domain name registration which ensures your domain name will point torepparttar 134360 correct IP address as soon asrepparttar 134361 name is registered. If you register your domain name with a different company you will need to specifyrepparttar 134362 IP address of your hosting server before anyone is able to view your files.

Types of Web Hosting

  • Shared Hosting

    Shared hosting means your site will be hosted on a web server that is also hosting a number of other websites atrepparttar 134363 same time. The server disk space and server resources, i.e. RAM, data transfer is divided up betweenrepparttar 134364 various clients. Although your site is located on a shared server, your files are still secure and can not be viewed by anyone else who also has their site on that web server.

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