Web Hosting Basics

Web Hosting Basics
By Veronica Bendersky

Several times I have found myself in the situation of having toexplain someone what web hosting is. As it turned out, certainpeople instantly got the idea, but for others, it was somethingnew and hard to understand. The purpose of this note is toclarify what web hosting is for those who don't know much aboutit.

If you want to have your own website, you need three mainingredients:-the website pages (index.html, contact.html, for example)

-the domain name, which you need to register. Something likewww.your-domain.com . You may not get a domain for your website,but place it inside an existing domain, likewww.some-domain/my-website . If you're creating a businesswebsite, it is highly recommended that you get a domain for it.It will look much more professional.

-a place where your site resides and is reachable by internetusers. You need to place your site in a web server, a computerwhich is permanently connected to Internet and which othercomputers can reach.

Web Hosting companies have powerful servers and so they canserve several sites in the same computer. They sell the serviceof "hosting", providing a space in their server for your site,and letting you use their server resources, like mail server anddatabases, depending on the package you buy. The web hostingcompany assigns you a space where you save your site pages sothey are accessible through the web. So that's it. That's webhosting, in a few words.

Web hosting packages come in all kind of flavors. You need tolook carefully and find a company you trust, which offers apackage containing the services you need. Do not pay more forservices you don't need. They will be useless. Just get apackage that is enough for you, and then, if your site grows,you can always upgrade to a new level.

Let's have a look at some of the services that may be includedin a web hosting package:

-storage space: generally expressed in MB (megabytes). Yourneeds depend on your site's characteristics. You should see howmuch space your site occupies, by adding up size of pages plusimages, for example.

-bandwidth and monthly traffic: this will be enough in mostcases, unless you have a website with many visits per day.

-PHP, ASP, CGI: this means support for programming languages. Ifyour site is written in PHP, you need to find a web hostingpackage with PHP enabled.

-MySQL, Access: these are databases. If your website makes useof a database, you need to have at least one database includedin your package. Some hosting packages come with unlimiteddatabases, othes include a fixed number of them.

-Front Page Extensions: if your website has been created usingFront Page, you need to get a package with Front Page extensionsenabled.

-Control Panel: this will be useful for you. A Control Panellets you manage your hosting account settings using a webinterface, all you need is your browser. An example of what youcan easily do using a control panel is create and delete emailaddresses.

-Support: it is important that the hosting company brindscustomer support and you can reach them easily, for example theymay provide a ticketing system where you create tickets toinform them of any question or problem, or they may provide youwith an email address where you can send your inquiries. In anycase, they must respond promptly to your messages, although thatis something you will be able to check once you're theircustomer. You can start by sending them an email with a questionbefore acquiring a hosting plan, to verify how long they take toanswer.

These are some basic features a web hosting plan may have, youwill find most plans have more services listed. Web hosting isan arena full of technical terms. Don't be ashamed to ask forclarification when you do not understand a particular service,or if you are not sure which plan is the right for you. It isbetter to be safe than sorry.