How Hosting Services Functions

Hosting is a service that hosting distributors provide so that you can put your site on the web.

How can people open your web site?

When you build a site and you want other individuals to visit it, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a web hosting server. If you attempt to render the site discoverable online by hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it always online, which is why website hosting services came into being.

How does hosting work?

Web hosting corporations offer you hard disk storage space for your website on their high-end computers (servers) and ensure continuous network connectivity. When someone types your URL (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can explore the content of your site.

Types of web hosting

With the progress of Internet technologies, several types of web hosting services have come into existence to match the different needs of website owners, including shared hosting services, VPS server hosting services and dedicated web server hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared web hosting is the most commonly used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where a single web hosting server is shared between numerous clients who are restricted by the CPU, web traffic and web server space quotas that they have been allotted. This form of hosting is typically less expensive - you don't need to buy the entire server in advance, since it is divided among plenty of hosting users, and the hosting provider can afford to provide much more affordable prices. It is also much easier to use - the web server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the web hosting distributor handles all server maintenance procedures and software updates for you.

The setback of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's system resources with other hosting account holders and if one web site becomes really busy it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the web sites on that hosting server, but most hosting suppliers, including us at HeartlighTV Web Services, have protection systems at work that hinder that from occurring.

A definition of a web hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most widely used form of web hosting, the majority of hosting providers and hosting customers simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is an enormous rivalry on the hosting marketplace, most hosting providers endeavor to provide affordable prices and gifts with their hosting services. We, for instance, provide different website hosting packages and two billing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your finances. If you pick the annual invoicing cycle, you will obtain a present - one charge-free domain name registration.

VPS services

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated server hosting solution. If your web site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared hosting plan, a virtual private web hosting server package is a suitable option. VPS server web hosting users still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other virtual web server hosting account owners, but the hard disk drive is split up using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own guaranteed system resources and can be configured practically like a full-fledged dedicated web hosting server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a virtual hosting server are not shared. Additionally, the virtualization technology offers you much more autonomy to configure your VPS hosting server, but it also presupposes a higher level of technical competence.

Dedicated Server

With the Dedicated Server solution, the customer gets an entire dedicated web hosting server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated web server hosting solution is the most reliable of all hosting solutions and offers many customization possibilities - the dedicated web server hosting customers can select the hardware and software specifications that will match their demands. Dedicated system resources and no-holds-barred performance are among the reasons why a dedicated server web hosting package is an excellent option for a resource-demanding business web portal, for instance - you will not share the physical machine's system resources with anyone else and will have full root privileges. You will have complete control over the server, which will allow you to make any configuration modifications that you might need. The weak side of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a higher degree of technical know-how is required - unless you engage an Information Technology professional, it will be your duty to manage and configure the dedicated server. The dedicated server web hosting solution is also much more high-priced, since the cost of the dedicated web hosting server isn't shared between any other customers.

A website hosting recommendation for beginners

If you are just starting to create your site and are seeking a web hosting solution to commence with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most logical choice. If your website grows beyond your shared web hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and requires no migration of your website files, because only the parameters of your web hosting account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting package to a more advanced one at any particular moment without worrying about the time remaining before the expiration date. Additionally, if you finally reach the most powerful shared web hosting plan and still need more resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it suggests that your web site's popularity has expanded!), there always is the option to move to a VPS server hosting solution or a dedicated web server hosting solution without needing to change hosting service providers.