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With all the features and options available in the web hosting
industry today, it comes as little surprise that many web hosting beginners feel
a bit overwhelmed. I personally was a hosting beginner not too long ago, and can
clearly recall thinking that I would never be able to gain the knowledge
necessary to create and launch my site, however, after spending a bit of spare
time reading up on the industry, I came to the conclusion that it really wasn`t
web hosting wasn`t nearly as difficult as it appeared to be. After all, if some
snotty little 8-year old kid can make a nice-looking, fully functional personal
homepage, how hard can it be? For the hosting beginner, mastering the technical
terms of the web hosting industry is nowhere near as important as understanding
what kind of host is the right kind for your particular web site.
Generally speaking, web sites can be divided into one of three
large categories: Personal/Small Business Homepages, E-Commerce Web Sites, and
Information Providers. The type of host you choose depends a great deal on what
category your site falls into. The next section is dedicated to discussing each
of these three major categories, and which type of host is best suited to each
category.
Personal Homepage/Small Business Website
A
personal homepage or small business website is generally the smallest and most
basic type of web site, and does not require a lot of disk space or bandwidth.
As a result, you have one of two plausible options when choosing the type of web
host for your site, Virtual Hosting or Free Hosting.
E-Commerce Website
If you plan to offer goods
for sale on your website, your site will be far more complex, and also need to
be able to handle more traffic and data transfer. For E-Commerce sites, there
are three viable solutions: Co-location, Dedicated Server, and Virtual
Hosting.
Information Provider
Information Providers are
generally the largest types of sites on the web, and must be designed to handle
a lot of traffic. That being the case, Information Providers usually must take a
more serious, and more costly approach to web hosting. If you are going to be
creating a larger site that will be used as a source of information to users
around the world, consider either investing in your own server equipment,
choosing a Co-location Server, or a Dedicated Server.
Virtual Hosting
Virtual Hosting is a type of
hosting where you "rent" space in a large server, and share that server with
other web sites. The advantages of Virtual Hosting are that it is extremely cost
efficient, and offers a variety of functions and options to suit nearly any
site. The disadvantages of Virtual Hosting, however, are that you are at the
complete mercy of the server. If you happen to pick a bad server, your site
could be down for long periods of time, costing you lots of potential visitors
that will not come back a second time.
Free Hosting
Free Hosting is a type of hosting
where you get space in a larger site for free, provided that you allow the site
to advertise on your homepage. The advantages of Free Hosting are that it costs
nothing, and therefore requires no investment other than a little bit of time.
Free Hosting programs also do provide a number of good options for your site,
and allow you to create a fully functional, attractive web site for free.
Although it does have a number of advantages, Free Hosting also has an equal
number of disadvantages. With nearly all free hosts, users can not use an
individual domain name, but typically are forced to use something like this www.theirname.com/yourname. In
addition, Free Hosting packages offer limited space and file transfer, and do
not offer options like email.
Co-location
Co-location hosting is a type of
hosting that uses your server equipment located in a secure, state of the art
facility in another location. The most significant positive aspect of
Co-location hosting is that it provides you with the ultimate in control over
the speed and reliability of your site. With Co-location, your site is basically
as good as you want it to be. The most significant negative aspect of
Co-location is that it is rather expensive. Servers do not come cheaply, nor do
the technicians that you will need to look after it. As a result, Co-location is
the least attractive option based on the high initial cost, but is an excellent
alternative for extremely serious or financially-free webmasters.
Dedicated Server
Dedicated Server hosting is a
type of hosting where you rent an entire server, and is a good solution for
serious webmasters lacking the initial startup capital to purchase their own
server. Dedicated Server hosting offers a high degree of control, and offers a
lot of disk space and file transfer. Because your site is the only one being
served by your dedicated server, you can also count on a fast connection. The
advantages of Dedicated Server hosting is that it offers everything you need to
get top quality service, without having to purchase a server. The disadvantages
are that it is significantly more expensive than Virtual Hosting, and does not
offer the same levels of control that are available with Co-location
hosting.
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