Types of Website Hosting

If you're interested in creating an online presence for yourself or your business, the best way to do it is to build a website. Websites are, most basically, collections of files, so each one requires a place to store its files and a way to make those files accessible to other people connected to the internet. A web server, through web hosting, performs these critical functions. While every site needs hosting, there are a number of different ways that website hosting can be done. Which type of hosting will work best for your site depends on its size and complexity, as well as the resources and technical expertise at your disposal. To help you figure out the best hosting match for you, we'll take you through some of the most popular website hosting options below.

Shared Website Hosting

Shared hosting, also called virtual hosting, is the hosting of multiple websites on the same web server. With shared hosting, a web hosting company provides the user storage space and makes the website's files accessible to others via the internet. The web host also maintains the server and provides technical support for it. For those who are not technically inclined or who do not have access to their own technical support staff, having a web host to manage these matters can make shared hosting can make a great fit.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of shared hosting is that its efficient use of resources means that it costs much less than most other types of website hosting. Shared web hosting also means that users can benefit from the expertise of the web hosting company providing the servers; a web hosting company like Freeservers that specializes in shared hosting has the experience and resources to provide exceptional reliability and technical support for your site. The specialized resources of a shared hosting company are well positioned to keep your site running properly and serving quickly at all times.

While shared hosting is an appropriate choice for many users, it's not right for everyone. Those with extensive technical know-how who want complete control over their servers and websites are better served by another hosting option. Additionally, if your site is large and extremely active, you may need more server resources than shared hosting provides.

Dedicated Website Hosting

With dedicated web hosting, there is a web server devoted entirely to your site. You may purchase your own server or pay for access to a server owned by someone else. If you own your own server and have it stored in someone else's facility, you are using what is known as colocation hosting. In any type of dedicated hosting, because the server is exclusively dedicated to your site, you will have full control over its use and administration. This allows you to manage all aspects of your site. If your intent is to create a large site for a company with plenty of technical and financial resources, dedicated hosting might be right for you. If your site will demand a lot of server space and bandwidth, too, you may need a dedicated server to host it.

For individuals and small or midsized companies, however, there are a number of aspects of dedicated hosting that make it a less desirable option. Setting up or leasing and maintaining your own web server requires a great deal of technical expertise as well as a significant financial investment. Because the web server you use will determine whether your site is reliably online and available to visitors, you need to be certain that your server is stable, reliable, well maintained, and able to handle heavy visitor traffic; maintaining this level of performance is not always easy.

Virtual Private Server Website Hosting

This type of hosting is something of a cross between dedicated hosting and shared hosting. Virtual private server hosting involves a dedicated server being shared by multiple users. The users share the resources of the server, but the server space is strictly divided into allocated percentages so that each user's percentage of the server is dedicated only to that user's website. This hosting arrangement gives a user some of the control of a dedicated server without the large-scale investment in a server that may have more space than necessary. Virtual private server hosting does provide limited resources, however, and even if your site experiences a temporary traffic spike or another unusual demand, there will not be extra resources flexibly available to meet the need. The somewhat complicated arrangements of virtual private server hosting can also be a drawback to this hosting option, as service providers can create confusing service agreements that include unexpected limitations for their users.

Shared Website Hosting with Freeservers

Now that you've learned about your hosting options, perhaps you've decided that shared hosting is right for your website. When you're ready to create your shared hosting account, start by comparing the web hosting packages Freeservers offers. We provide a variety of packages, from free web hosting to feature-rich business hosting packages, so you're sure to find one that fits your needs. With Freeservers, you'll receive top-notch hosting services and loads of useful features, all with the exceptional reliability, stability, and customer support that you need to make your website a success.

What is ASP Web Hosting?

ASP web hosting refers to web hosting companies who provide support for ASP, or Active Server Page.

What is ASP?

ASP/Active Server Pages are HTML pages with embedded ASP scripts. ASP scripts are processed on the server before the page is sent to the visitor's browser. ASP allows you to create dynamic database driven pages, a visitor can access data in a database and interact with page objects such as Active X or Java components.

How does ASP work?

When you type in a URL in the Address Box of your browser, you are asking the web server to send the file to your computer. If the file is standard HTML, then the file that your web browser receives will look exactly the same as it did on the web server. However, if an ASP file is sent to your computer from the server, it first runs the HTML code, then the ASP code. The ASP code could be anything such as the current time, date, or other such information.

How to find an ASP web host?

You will need to find a web host who will host your website on a Windows server. It is safer to host your ASP pages on a Windows server as they are more stable and most ASP components work specific to Windows. You also need to consider if your website uses a database, such as SQL and Access. Make sure your web host provides support for the type of database your website requires.

Types of Web Hosting Services

There are various types of web hosting services available to host your website. Before signing up for web hosting services, it is important to understand what kind of service your website needs, the kind of server you or your business needs, your budget, and what type of services the web host offers.

Hosting options available are:

• Free Hosting
• Shared Hosting
• Dedicated Hosting
• Collocated Hosting

Free Hosting

Free web hosting can be a good choice when you just want to build a non-critical website for fun. Very often in a free hosting environment, connection speed is slow, website can be down frequently, and advertising banners is automatically added to your website. Some companies require you to purchase your domain name to receive free hosting services from them, while others offer you a free subdomain under them, such as [yourname.webhost.com]. Be careful as you will not be able to transfer these free subdomains.

Shared Hosting

In a shared hosting environment, your and other website owners shared one server. This includes sharing the physical server and the software applications within the server. Shared hosting services are affordable because the cost to operate the server is shared between you and these other owners. There are, however, a number of down sides, such as being slower.

Dedicated Hosting

In a dedicated hosting environment, you have the entire web server to yourself. This allows for faster performance, as you have all the server’s resources entirely, without sharing with other website owners. However, this also means that you will be responsible for the cost of server operation entirely. This is a good choice for websites that requires a lot of system resources, or need a higher level of security.

Collocated Hosting

In this type of hosting, you will purchase your own server and have it housed at a web host’s facilities. You will be responsible for the server itself. An advantage of this type of hosting service is you have full control of the web server. You can install any scripts or applications you need.

Shared or Dedicated?

Before you make a decision, you need to understand what your hosting needs are, as these hosting services differ in terms of performance and price.

Shared Hosting

In a shared hosting environment, several websites are put on to a single server. This way, the web host can reduce its cost, and services will be cheaper. Limitations include limits on storage and bandwidth, and the performance of your website is largely affected by the needs of the other websites, as you will be sharing the same server resources. This hosting service is ideal for websites that do not require a lot of bandwidth, disk storage or CPU consumption.

Dedicated Hosting

In a dedicated hosting environment, your website is the only one hosted on the server. Because you are not sharing server resources with other websites, your limit is that of the server. This hosting service is for people who plan to run a very popular website, requires a lot of disk space or run scripts that requires more than average CPU consumption.

Features of a Hosting Plan

Disk Space

All hosting accounts offer a certain amount of disk space that you can use to store your web files. It is recommended that you have some sort of estimates on what you need for various tasks. How much space willyou need for your emails, web files, databases, etc. By breaking down your usage, you can better estimate how much space you should go for.

Email Accounts

Email accounts are a common feature of hosting, especially if you are hosting a domain. There are three main types of email accounts: POP3, forwarding, and aliases.

• POP3 accounts are the traditional inboxes. You have space on the server to store your emails, and at the same time, you can use an email program to download your mail. Each login and password combination usually equates to one account.
• Forwarding mail accounts are useful if you are employing the service of another company to filter your emails for you. Rather than storing your emails on your mail server, emails are redirected to another email address.
• Aliases accounts are similar to forwarding mail accounts. Some hosts allow you to setup a catch-all alias, which is often used to collect emails sent to addresses not recognized by your mail server.

FTP Access

After you have created your web pages on your computer, you need to transfer those files to your web server. The files are transferred to the server by use of FTP.

Domain Name Server (DNS)

Each computer on the Internet is assigned a unique address, called an IP address. A typical IP address looks like this: 199.123.456.7

It is very difficult to keep in mind the IP addresses of all the websites we visit daily. Words are easier to remember than strings of numbers. This is where domain names come into the picture. When you visit a website, all you need to know is its URL. Computers remember numbers, and DNS helps us convert the URL into an IP address that the computer can understand.

When you type in domain.com into your browser, the browser first needs to get the IP address of www.domain.com. The browser contacts a DNS server to query the location of the server where the webpages are stored. Think of it as a directory service of IP address.

The classic phonebook directory analogy, you need to find the company "Joe's Bookstore", you look in the directory and see that it is located on 123 Main Street. Then you go to the address to visit the store.

FatCow Hosting Review

With so many web hosting companies available, it becomes extremely difficult for a new customer to choose the best among them. It is essential that a customer before finalizing a deal with any web hosting company goes through such reviews so that they later don’t have to repent. The most popular web hosting company is the FatCow. It is for very obvious reasons that you kept this web hosting firm as your top priority. But before you come to any conclusion, read this review so that you do not commit any mistake.

FatCow is known for its exceptional customer service and guarantee till satisfaction. Although a few customers went unsatisfied but small failures does not harm the reputation of this company. FatCow offers top class features for all of its customers, support and the pricing are good and it’s a company you can rely on. FatCow is poles apart from other web hosting companies. This company puts its plans, features and services in such a way that it looks entirely different from others. The way this web hosting company designs and builds up a site might not be possible for the other web hosting companies to produce in a similar way.