web hosting article - web hosting - affordable web hosting plan

This article discusses the basic definition of web hosting, why web hosting is not expensive on all levels and that there is always an affordable web hosting plan for you. Before we talk about web hosting, we need to outline some basic definitions:

A web site - a web site is a site of pages, like the site you are currently viewing
Domain name - a web address; ecarnate.com is this web site's domain name
A web host - Someone who plays host to a web site (stores a web site, and makes it available through the internet)
A server - a robust computer that is connected to the internet and never switched off, dedicated to serving something (this might be files, applications or for the servers this article discusses - serving web pages, in this case we have a web server)
A data centre - a building, dedicated to storing nothing but the servers mentioned above in specialised environments (Wikipedia definition)
A reseller - a reseller is a person or company that takes a service or product and sells it on again
Web space - an amount of storage (usually measured in magabytes or gigabytes) in which web pages are stored
Download - "to download" something means to receive data from another computer. For example, when you clicked a link to get to this page you downloaded a copy of the web page from the server

A web site being "on the internet" isn't a definition we are too fond of, because something "being on the internet" implies that something is sat on a physical object called "the internet".

This isn't strictly true, though. The internet is a name given to the networking of millions of user's computers and servers - all connected together. For a web site to "be on the internet" it has to be hosted on a server (see definition above) which is connected to the internet.

This article will describe web hosting from the top down - the highest level, to the lowest level of web hosting.

Shared hosting

Reseller hosting

Dedicated hosting

Small and medium businesses, regular web site owners.

People who wish to establish themselves as a small web host selling shared hosting accounts, or wish to manage multiple shared hosting accounts.

Larger web hosts or for web sites which use very heavy applications to run them.

The hosting of single or a few web sites.

Resellers of shared hosting accounts.

Web hosting companies, large businesses / corporations.

This web site.

This type of hosting is not targeted at a certain type of web site.

BBC.com
Hotmail.com
Google.com

What hosting is right for you?

In order to decide which type of hosting is the right option, you must assess your requirements. You do not need to over-purchase resources you will not immediately need in the name of future proofing. Web hosting is flexible enough to adjust as and when adjustment is needed.

You will find that for one or a few web sites, shared hosting (such as the hosts reviewed on this web site) will offer more than enough resources, as well as allow for growth in web site traffic (the number of visitors to your site) which would result in more bandwidth being used - which is a counter of how much data is sent to and from your web hosting account.

The section below details how the types of web hosting are broken down, starting with dedicated hosting.

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