Intergalactic Web Designers

Deep in the heart of an office complex there lies a room that may be filled with floor to ceiling server cages that house multiple web-based servers. In the back of a storefront you may likely find servers working to keep websites operational.

A web host is simply a leasing agent for space on an existing server to allow your business website to be accessible by millions of Internet customers. The use of a web hosting service is similar to leasing a storefront as a showroom – it just costs less.

However, unlike a typical building lease option, a web host can provide a variety of features that you can customize based on the needs of your online business. For instance, you might need the capability of providing File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to business associates to access company data or new manufacturing specs. You might also need other data management protocols.

Most ecommerce websites will also need a shopping cart with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), database support and other similar features. Web hosting may not always be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. You should determine what your needs will be in a web hosting solution and seek to find a solution that bundles the most options for the most reasonable price.

Interestingly, many of the sites that provide web design also make web hosting a part of the package. There may be many reasons this is so, but the predominant reason may be the access to the site information through a known or existing server. However, it is possible to work with a web hosting solution to allow the development of a site that is personally built by you. These web-hosting solutions allow the use of an extensive selection of features that can be customized through template rich designs and implemented in less time than other web development options.

You also want to find a web hosting service that can guarantee the greatest amount of uptime. Because the Internet has grown so fast you may also find web-hosting solutions that have no track record, so be careful about selecting a company that has not had ample time to prove their capabilities in maintaining quality service.

Leasing a portal to the web through a web-hosting service is one of the most cost effective ways to unleash your entrepreneurial spirit through a business startup, but you may be best served in looking through a variety of options before settling on a service that will help determine your accessibility on the web.

The problem with choosing a web hosting service is that you just don’t really know what you are going to get until you get it. Even if you have had a look at the website and everything seems ok, you need to remember that it is easy for anyone to say the things you want to hear. A lot of people have actually discovered that the service they get is a lot different to the service they were promised before they signed up. So what many people will do to prevent this happening to them is to look towards the testimonials or reviews before coming to any decision; there are advantages and disadvantages to doing this however.

The Pros Of Looking At Reviews And Testimonials When It Comes To Choosing A Web Hosting Provider.

When its time to choose a web hosting service, the best people to look to for help is those who have already been using the service. The point of a review or testimonial is to ensure that you can see the good and bad with any particular service that you are thinking about. You can get a lot of information from reviews and they are not hard to find for any service.

The Cons Of Looking For Testimonials And Reviews When It Comes To Choosing A Web Hosting Provider.

Who were the reviews written by? You need to be asking yourself this question. Don’t for one minute think that these web hosting providers are not going to be writing their own testimonials; after all why wouldn’t they? In fact some of the more popular ones may pay a group of people to go out on the web and promote their services. You may even find that the person you are speaking to on a forum could be paid to offer positive advice. And some web hosting providers also get people to write bad reviews about their competitiors with a view to damaging their reputation so the bad reviews cannot always be believed either.

Web hosting reviews and testimonials can be a help, but don’t take them as gospel.

Whenever you make your decision to enter the big, bad world of internet marketing, you should really have web hosting dealt with beforehand. But the world of web hosting can be confusing. For instance, you could find free web hosting or even dedicated servers on your travels.

Web hosting knowledge, contrary to the popular belief, is very easy to acquire and understand. As a beginner , before I started reading up on the subject, I was positive that I had to do some kind of a diploma or a degree course in this area to understand and finally be able to have my own website hosted. But I was totally wrong, with guidance of only documents like this and a lot of research I hosted my website within a week. In this article I plan to share all the very basic knowledge that you must know about web hosting. If you are a complete web hosting beginner, this article is an absolute must for you. Read on.

Web hosting:    In very simple terms getting your website on the internet is called web hosting. Every website that you have ever seen, or will ever see is actually stored on a computer somewhere in the world. When you type the address of that website in your browser’s address bar, the website is fetched from that computer to yours. Just like that, your website will be placed on a computer somewhere too. That is known as web hosting.

Web host:    The company/person who is the owner of the computer where you want your website to be stored or “hosted” is called the web host. It is the web host who offer you packages and take your money and give you hosting and their technical support.

Types Of Web Hosting:    There are two major types of web hosting. Shared hosting and Dedicated hosting.        (i).Shared Hosting:In Shared web hosting, your website is stored on a computer where there are other websites. Means you are sharing a web server with other people like you who have acquired shared hosting.        (ii).Dedicated Hosting:In Dedicated  web hosting, you acquire a full web server for your hosting needs. Which means only your website will be hosted on that computer and no one else’s.

Technical Terms You Should Be Aware Of:

Technical Support:    This is the help and support department of the web hosting company. This is a very important aspect of web hosting and must be fully functional and fast.

Bandwidth:    This is the amount of data transfer allowed to your website, every month. Usually around 10GB is fine for beginner websites.

Web Space:    Web space is the amount of space which will be provided to you for your web site. Your web site’s size cannot exceed this given web space limit.

Domain Name:    Domain name is the word/words which user will enter in the browser to access your website. Domain names are registered separately from the web hosting. Sometimes the web hosts offer to register the domain names too.

Flash:    Flash is a popular media type mostly used for animations, it is developed by Macromedia. It is commonly used because it requires less space and downloading time with great graphics and animations.

FrontPage:    A very popular website design and publishing tool (software) developed by Microsoft.

FTP:    File Transfer Protocol, the means of transferring or “uploading” your website’s files on the web host’s server.

HTML:    Hyper Text Markup Language, the basic language in which you will write your website and the language in which the client and the server’s browsers communicate.

Shopping Cart:    A software designed to take orders from your customers on your website and keeps storing them until they want to check out. The software then charges the customer by the designed method e.g. by taking the customer’s credit card number and charging it for the total product’s amount.

CGI:    Common Gateway Interface, a processing interface. CGI scripts take information from the user and can process it in multiple ways, including storing the information in a database.

MySQL:    A popular type of database server, very commonly used with PHP.ASP:    Active Server Pages, is a scripting language that enables the web designers to design their pages dynamically with databases implementation.

Control Panel/Website Manager:    A Control Panel/Website Manager is an online piece of software which enables the web hosting users to manage their web content easily and effectively.Email Forwarding (Email alias):    Allows the web hosting user to create a number of apparent email addresses on a certain domain, which in reality are only names pointing to just one original and proper email address of your choice e.g. you can make   mike@mywebsite.com,  sales@mywebsite.com and as many as you like. But in reality they would all be pointing to one real email address e.g. mike@someemailservice.com.

SSL:    Secure Socket Layer, is a protocol designed to provide a secure, encrypted connections like financial transactions on the internet.

Web Statistics:    A lot of web hosts provide website statistics for free. These are the statistical data of the users who visit your website. By analyzing this data you would get to know how many visitors viewed your website daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. Other useful information to improve the content and design of your website is also included e.g. the operating system on the machine of each user and the type of web browser they are using.

Above is the basic technical terms that you must know before you head off to buy web hosting. With this knowledge now you can make a decision about which features you want and which ones you don’t, for your website.