A definition of website hosting
As its name signifies, web hosting is a solution, which entails hosting web content. There are different forms and kinds of web hosting, depending on the aims and on the usage. Even so, they all entail hosting files, which, once hosted, are made available throughout the World Wide Web. A web host is actually a server that is connected to the Web and has its own personal IP address, which permits people to have access to it through the World Wide Web. The server's configuration and its resources depend on the type of hosting solution it will be utilized for.
What are the various types of web hosting?
Depending on the function, the business hosting service may be:
File Storage Web Hosting - this form of web hosting allows the customers to store their files on a certain server. With the typical file storage web hosting solution, the files that are hosted may only be accessed by the person that's utilizing the service. This hosting service typically applies to backups of computers , documents, private files and even other hosting servers. This service may also impose given restrictions with regard to the disk space and the root-level access. There may also be web traffic limits, but that is dependent on the actual host.
Warez Hosting - the so-called warez web hosting service is comparable with the previous web hosting service form. Nevertheless, unlike the file storage hosting solution, the warez hosting service is used for circulating patented content without the authorization of the patent holder. To put it briefly - it entails the illegal circulation of files and documents. There are a lot of approaches for this to be achieved, but the 2 essential ways are - through simple Hypertext Transfer Protocol downloading and through peer-to-peer connections. The first one entails either a particular website, or, most often, just a directory on a web server that's been made available for everybody to access it and thus download copyrighted documents for free. The second approach involves a peer-to-peer connection, making use of the so-called Torrent web servers, through which users transfer files between each other. There are very few web page hosting corporations that permit such type of web hosting on their hosting servers, mostly due to all the legal predicaments that it entails. Usually such web pages are hosted on personal dedicated web servers that are registered by third-party companies either in the Middle East or in Asia.
Email Web Hosting - this solution is utilized with both shared web hosting and dedicated servers, depending on the user's intention. If you desire to launch your own personal SMTP e-mail server, then you will require either a virtual private web hosting server or a dedicated hosting server that offers the level of access needed to accomplish such a task. For ordinary electronic mail web hosting purposes, however, you can create a plain shared web site hosting account, to which you can point the mail exchanger records of your domain. This is not a solution that's widely used, because the web site hosting and the e-mail hosting services are being served by two different web servers, usually belonging to separate providers.
Web Page Hosting - the most widely spread and universally used hosting service as of today. It's utilized for hosting site files, whose type is dependent on the OS the web hosting server is utilizing - Linux or Windows. Different types of files demand concrete web hosting server Operating Systems, otherwise they won't be exhibited correctly on the Internet. This type of web hosting may have web storage and web traffic quota limitations, root access and CPU usage restrictions.
Depending on the goals and on the objectives, the client should select the type of server that he demands for his project, and, of course, the web space hosting supplier that's going to provide it. There are various sorts of web servers, based on the specifications and the webspace hosting solutions that they provide. These are:
Shared Website Hosting Server - a shared web page hosting server includes a smaller amount of system resources, which, of course, is reflected on the price of the service. It can be used for hosting small size and middle size sites, which do not require immense quotas of disk space and web traffic.
Semi-Dedicated Servers Hosting - they work on the same principle as the shared web servers. Still, there are much fewer customers sharing the same web server. Hence, each of them will get a larger quota of the hosting server's resources like RAM, server storage space, traffic and CPU. Ideal for hosting popular web portals that do not need complete server root access.
VPS - the virtual web servers are ideal for medium size web portals, which do demand root-level access to the server's configuration files. Typically, there are a handful of virtual hosting server accounts hosted on the same physical server. Yet, each of them is autonomous from the other ones and has its own OS.
Dedicated Hosting - a completely dedicated physical server set up and accessed by you and only you. It ensures a huge amount of resources. It also offers full root-level access, which makes it an ideal platform for any kind of web portal that requires a hosting service.
The sole question that remains is:
Which hosting vendor should I select?
As stated above, there are very few hosting companies offering warez web hosting services because of judicial problems. Such hosting companies are being closed down practically every month. Therefore, if you desire to provide such a service, you should do it on your own computer. The shared web hosting service is the most widely spread type of web hosting service. For that reason, every hosting company provides it. Not all of them, though, offer solutions such as VPS web servers, semi-dedicated web hosting servers and dedicated web servers. Most of the small sized web hosting corporations do not have the means demanded for offering those solutions. Therefore it's always best to pick a larger hosting company that can provide its customers with all the solutions that they want. You can quickly recognize such web hosts by the sorts of solutions that they are making available and by the way that they present them to the customers. For instance, some hosting companies permit you to kick off with a small scale hosting package and then upgrade to a more powerful one, if you consider it obligatory to do so. This is extremely suitable, since you do not need to migrate web pages between servers and there is no possibility of experiencing downtime due to all the complications that may crop up. Hosting companies like Exclusive Hosting offer all kinds of solutions and have the necessary server resources and staff to guarantee that their clients will not encounter any predicaments when swapping services, which is what a top hosting provider is actually all about.