What is Shared Hosting?

If you have built a web site and you want other individuals to check it out, you must transfer your web site content to a publicly accessible server.

Where to host your site?

Even though you can use your own computer as a server, it is a more conventional practice to let a hosting service provider host your site. The prime reason for that is the bigger stability and the better visibility of your website, because hosting service providers have top-notch hardware and apportion a much greater web traffic usage allowance, which guarantees the faster access to your website from all around the globe.

Shared hosting services

Select a shared hosting service, which allows you to register domain names and to create mail accounts. Lots of web shared hosting vendors, like us at Cloud Web Solutions, offer a cost-free domain name registration as a gift if you open a web hosting account.

Hosting your website on your own

Hosting your site on your own web server is certainly an option, but only in case you have time and the necessary competence. There are certain matters that you need to consider, among them the hardware and software costs. To possess a "real", professional-looking website, you will need to buy some powerful server hardware, since you cannot anticipate an inexpensive computer to do the task. You will also require a permanent high-speed connection without outages, which typically is offered at a pretty high price. If you are availing of licensed software for your website, you will need to pay a license fee as well. You may also have to cope with bugs and rootkits. You will have to keep your server running all the time in an environment where "everything could happen". If you do not possess the necessary technical proficiency, you will need to engage a sysadmin to cope with these issues on your behalf, which will make the price of hosting your website yourself even higher than that of a dedicated web server furnished by a hosting supplier.

A dedicated web hosting server offered by a web hosting services provider

Leasing a server from a hosting provider is an appropriate decision if you would like to develop a heavy resource-demanding website or a business web page that has very meticulous safety requirements. The chief benefits of utilizing a dedicated hosting solution are the high-speed connection, the constant power supply and the very powerful hardware. Certain hosting corporations, again like us at Cloud Web Solutions, offer virtual private servers hosting and semi-dedicated server hosting services, which are based on extremely powerful web servers that can be shared by several customers. You can also anticipate them to provide effective server load balancing services and the required data backup servers.

Security and reliability

Hosting distributors are specialized in offering web hosting services and because this is what they do to earn a living, you can expect them to offer continuous website availability, the latest software updates and the best malware protection, as well as sysadmins available 24/7/365 to support you in emergency cases.

Pick your web hosting services provider

What you need to consider when choosing your web hosting packages provider is the stability of the offered hosting services. Make sure that the hosting provider of your choice provides a 24-hour technical support service. Do not place yourself in a scenario where you cannot fix serious problems right away because you must wait till the next working day. What's more, if you pick a shared web hosting package, which features a 24x7 customer service, this implies that there constantly will be sysadmins available to solve any serious predicaments as soon as they take place, which is a very good thing.

Daily backups

Make certain that your hosting accounts provider offers routine data backups with the offered services, or else you may lose some precious data in the event of a hardware failure or because you have erased something unintentionally. The presence of everyday backups is typically mentioned in the hosting supplier's Terms of Service.

Web traffic and disk storage space

When choosing your hosting services provider, pay specific attention to the bandwidth usage quota limitations. Make sure that you won't have to overpay for unpredicted high volumes of web traffic if your site becomes more popular. There are a lot of web hosting firms that offer unmetered traffic nowadays, so the best step to take is to make certain that you have taken the correct decision prior to registering.

Content restrictions

Give special attention to the hosting distributor's content limitations. If you would like to publish images or to stream live video or audio, make sure that you can do that. Furthermore, most hosting vendors place limitations as far as utilizing their services for file storage purposes is concerned, so if you upload too many files that are not connected or directly linked to your web site, your account could get closed. Hence, examining the hosting company's Terms of Service, no matter how time-devouring and annoying this might be, is very important.

Electronic mail capabilities

The majority of hosting service providers nowadays also offer email services with all their hosting packages. It is a good idea to verify if the web hosting solutions provider of your choosing offers such options as well, so as to be certain that you'll obtain all the functionalities that you require in return for your money.