What is Web Hosting?
You may have heard the term ‘web hosting’ often but what does it really mean? Web Hosting is a service providing space on the internet for websites.
Once you have designed a website and made it, you want other people to see it so you will need to publish it with a web hosting service. Web hosting services work by storing your website files in high-powered computers called web servers which are connected to a very fast network. When someone types in your web address, the internet connects to the web server holding your website files and then transfers your website information back to their computer.
To be found on the internet, you have to have a domain name. The domain name is essentially your or your company’s internet address, just as a street address means you can receive visitors. Bearing this in mind, pick a domain name that’s memorable, sensible and relevant!
There are various types of web hosting and as technology progresses– there are now different types to meet the different needs of websites and customers:
Shared web hosting is the most common type and is also the easiest to begin on. Shared hosting is a service where one server is shared between many customers. This typically makes it cheaper as you don’t need to pay for the whole server upfront. It’s easy to use as the server is preconfigured with popular options and maintenance and security updates are taken care for you. As you share the server with many others, it could slow down when it gets busy though. Because shared web hosting is the most common type of web hosting, most hosting companies simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. For WordPress Hosting UK, visit https://www.igohost.co.uk/wordpress-hosting.php
Website builders are an easy way to build a website and get online. The site builder provides a wide range of professionally designed templates that can be completely customized to make your website exactly the way you want it with no prior experience needed. The website builder includes a free domain name and a web hosting account that is setup automatically. You’ll get professional looks at a low price but flexible functionality is hard and things can get tricky if you want to sell a lot of products.
Dedicated server hosting is the top of the range hosting. You get your own server and all its resources, dedicated to you for your sole use. It is fully flexible and able to customize, giving you the opportunity to choose the software specifications of the server you want. You will have full control so this inevitably means that some prior technical knowledge is required. This option is also more expensive as there is only you to meet the cost of the server.
Cloud hosting is a happy medium between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Cloud servers still share the physical server hardware with other cloud servers, but special virtualization technology partitions use the physical hardware so that each cloud server has its own dedicated resources and can be configured almost like a fully dedicated server. This option offers the most flexibility in the hosting sphere. Your site will have dedicated resources, a dedicated bandwidth, CPU and memory so even though you are sharing server equipment, you are not sharing the resources that you purchased. Fewer websites occupy the same server and your website will have more resources at its disposal than it would with shared web hosting.
