What is web hosting?
Web hosting is a place to store your website to let people (your clients) see it. Your domain name is your address on the Internet. Web hosting includes email services so that people can send you email on your domain name.To make all this work we run a large number of high speed computers (servers) with built in redundancies so that we can guarantee your website and email will be working at least 99.9% of the time.
All this is provided to you in the form of website hosting plans. Depending on the size of your website or the number email accounts you need, you can choose a plan that best suites your needs.
To have a Web site on the Internet you first need to have a Web server. Unfortunately, owning a Web server can be very costly and requires technical expertise that most businesses don't have. This is where Web Hosts come in. Web hosting companies provide the equipment and other technical resources that you need without the headaches that come when you have to do it yourself.
Think of a Web Host as the landlord of a building. A landlord rents out storefronts to various businesses. Each business decorates and runs their store differently, and doesn't worry about the maintenance of the building. In a similar way a Web Host rents out space on a Web server, (or entire Web servers), to various businesses. Each business builds their own Web site and never has to worry about the maintenance of their Web server
Which web hosting account should I choose?
All hosting plans include the same set of tools and features to build your website. You should choose the hosting account size based on the size of your website. If you are unsure, it’s best to start with the ‘Starter plan’ as you can always upgrade at a later date.More detailed information on hosting plans and services, and pricing is available online.
When choosing a Web Hosting company there are many things you need to keep in mind. Things like: Do I have FTP access? Do I receive E-mail and how many accounts do I get? How much Disk Space am I allocated? What is my bandwidth limit? What happens if I go over my monthly bandwidth limit? Does my account have a CGI-bin? What types of support does the host offer? What if I need a dedicated Server, can I get one? Are any ads placed on my site? Do I receive and free software with my account? All these questions should be asked before you choose a Web Host.
