An explanation of web site hosting
The most primary and widely utilized variety of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It's a way to host your web portal without having to understand much about programming and handling a web server. Moreover, it's also the most inexpensive type of web space hosting and it's quite affordable for everyone. Still, what is shared web space hosting?
What is shared webspace hosting?
As the name designates, the shared web space hosting solution is a sort of service where a lot of clients share the reserves of one and the same server. This means that all hosting server elements such as CPU, hard disks, RAM, network interface cards and so on, are allotted among the customers whose accounts are on that same web server. This is usually rendered attainable by setting up separate accounts for the different customers and fixing some limits and usage quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are imposed in order to hinder the users from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the web hosting server from overburdening. Normally, shared website hosting clients do not have root-level access to the web server's configuration files, which essentially goes to say that they do not have access to anything else on the web hosting server aside from their very own shared web hosting account. The site hosting features that each account may use are set by the web hosting provider that owns the web server and by the respective web site hosting package. That paves the way for the second vital question:
How are the shared hosting web servers shared among the customers?
Hosting providers that offer shared hosting packages normally have various web hosting packages. Those packages offer diverse quotas of hosting features and specs, which actually define the restrictions that a website hosting package will have. The customer may select between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he deems will befit him best. The web hosting package will then define what limits the customer's account will have, once created. The prices and the features of the website hosting packages are determined by the very web hosting supplier. Depending on the politics of the provider, the shared web hosting solution falls into two types - the free hosting service and the typical shared solution, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" providers as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to announce, which one is better, since they are quite different from each other and they indeed depend on the marketing strategy of the specific provider and, of course, the requirements of the specific customer.
What is the difference between the free of charge and the typical shared hosting solution?
Of course, the main difference between the free of charge and the paid solution is in the quantity of features that they offer. Free web space hosting suppliers are not capable of keeping a big number of hosting servers, hence, they plainly host more customers on one single hosting server by lowering the amount of system resources provided by the accounts. This will be effective only if the web servers are monitored and tackled properly, since the enormous number of accounts may cause the hosting server to crash repeatedly. The majority of the free hosting firms, however, ignore the quality of the service and therefore, it's quite hard to come across a free of cost web site hosting solution that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting companies usually offer free technical support even to the free site hosting users, since they want their websites to grow so that they eventually migrate to a paid webspace hosting account, which includes more hosting features. Such provider, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and oldest free hosting providers in the world.
At the same time, established shared web hosting providers like Duty Free Hosting, for instance, are able to keep a lot of web servers and hence, they may afford to provide much more powerful site hosting packages. Of course, that influences the cost of the website hosting plans. Paying a higher price for a hosting solution, though, does not necessarily imply that this package has a better quality. The most optimal services are the balanced ones, which offer a price that matches the real service which you're obtaining. The best web site hosting corporations that have been around for quite a while are revealing their price tags and package specifications in an objective manner, so that the customer may know what exactly he is obtaining. Furthermore, some of these offer a free bonus with the web hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of free-of-charge web design skins that are offered by 'Duty Free Hosting'. Such webspace hosting corporations do worry about their reputation and that is the reason why if you choose them, you can be confident that you won't get tricked into buying a package that you cannot in fact make use of.
What should I expect from a shared hosting solution?
The shared hosting solution is best for individuals who want to host a standard site, which is going to generate a small or medium amount of web traffic every month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared web page hosting account will last you a lifetime, since as your business grows bigger, your web site will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to ultimately move to a more feature-rich hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (also known as a private virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when selecting a site hosting company, you should also think about how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a separate vendor, which can bring about web site complications and even prolonged downtime for your web page. So, picking a web hosting provider like 'Duty Free Hosting', which can supply you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is essential and will spare you a lot of problems in the future.