A Beginners Guide To Web Hosting

It is a trend to keep up with the trends these days! We often depend on the numerous websites on the internet for almost all our day-to-day activities- be it shopping for clothes, groceries, gadgets, or looking up some topic specially if one needs to get done with their homework! So, we can come to a conclusion that, people, no matter in which corner of the earth, use the internet for one or the other purpose.

Did you ever sit back and wonder, where do these websites come from? How do they find their way to the Web?

The answer to this is- these websites are stored by certain organizations that provide WEBSITE HOSTING SERVICES as a result of which you can access these Websites with ease.

Now again, a question that strikes is What is Web-Hosting?

Web hosting is a service that is provided to any individual or an organization which allows them to post their website or their web page on the internet.

A Web Host or a Web-hosting service provider is that business organization which acts as a medium in allowing you to host your website on the internet and thereby making yourself visible to the masses. Web-Hosting has its’ own share of difficulties. It shows itself in different forms. Simply put, there are different types of web-hosting services offered by any organization. They are-

Shared Hosting – when you opt for a shared web-hosting plan, you would be sharing your server with other website owners. As a result of which the cost of hosting your website would be lesser compared to the other forms of hosting. In simpler words, you would be sharing your resources with others, so you would split the costs.

Cloud Hosting – Cloud Hosting ensures you a separate place on the server which would be yours altogether. You would be entitled to your own IP Address and it guarantees more security than what you can avail of in shared hosting.

Dedicated Hosting – In a dedicated hosting, you would own the entire server! This means that the server’s resources are at your disposal altogether which indicates that you won’t be sharing the resources with anyone else. This in turn would ensure faster performance.

This sums up almost all the basic things you need to know about web-hosting. So now you know how websites are hosted.

What about where these websites are hosted? Ever thought about that?

So, to put it simply, websites are hosted on certain platforms made available by the web-hosting service provider, these platforms being -WINDOWS and LINUX.

Each Web-Hosting service provider would offer either of these platforms for hosting your website. These have certain minute differences that characterize each of them.

Linux hosting is compatible with PHP and MySQL, which supports scripts such as WordPress, Zen Cart, and phpBB.

Windows hosting, on the other hand, uses Windows as the servers’ operating system and offers Windows-specific technologies such as ASP, .NET, Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL server (MSSQL).

It is probably a well-known fact that if your website does not require any special website scripting and database support, you can opt for LINUX, but if these are required, you can always turn to Windows.

So, now you can confidently assert that you know what Web-Hosting is. And all this knowledge made available to you at a mere glance!