Explain Web Hosting - Understanding How Web Hosting Works And Why You Need It

Web hosting is a service that is provided by many different companies all over the world.  Without web hosts none of us would be able to see any websites on the internet.  The essential service that they offer is to provide places for websites to be stored and from where they can be accessed by anyone who knows the unique address of that website.

When you type in the URL (uniform resource locator) of a website (or when you click on a link to a website) you are directed to the computer that the domain name has been pointed at.  That computer is a server owned and maintained by the web hosting company.  The job of the web host is to provide you with enough computer memory space to store all the pages images, files, etc that make up your website, and to make provision for the required amount of data transfer that will take place as your pages and files are viewed by website visitors.

While that is a great simplification, it does highlight two of the most fundamental things that you need to pay for when you sign up with a web hosting package.  The storage space you require for your website is what is called Disc Space and the amount of data transfer you will need is called Bandwidth.  Each web hosting service will offer you a certain amount of both of these things for a certain price.  The more of each that you require, the more money it is likely to cost you.

Web hosts tend to offer a range of hosting packages because different people and businesses have very different needs.  An individual setting up a site devoted to their hobby will have a very different requirement to an established multinational company wishing to sell thousands of products a day online.  A business with a large, busy website that involves e-commerce, may well opt for what is called dedicated hosting, which means that their site is stored on its own separate computer server.  The vast majority of personal and small business websites are on what is known as shared hosting, which means there are several different websites all stored on the same server.

When you are looking at possible web hosts and trying to compare what they offer and what they will cost, the two main services of disc space and bandwidth are obviously good starting points.  One thing you will come across is the offer of unlimited disc space or bandwidth, which is fine, but you just need to have an understanding of what this really means.  One thing is for sure, it does not really mean unlimited.  It usually means that provided your site is fairly average in terms of size and traffic you will not have a problem, but if you suddenly become flavour of the month and get a huge surge in traffic you could be taken offline.

Most good web hosts will define what they mean by unlimited, and tell you when you need to talk to them if you look likely to deviate from this.  You almost certainly will not have a problem with an unlimited package if your site is a reasonable sized site featuring mainly text.  The kinds of sites which are likely to run into problems are ones with huge image or video galleries or which involve lots of gaming.

In addition to the basics of disc space, bandwidth and price, there are other extremely important considerations that you should bear in mind when choosing a new web host.  Most will promise 99.9% uptime and excellent customer service.  What you need to find out is whether they actually deliver this in practice.  A great price and unlimited disc space are meaningless if your site is down every few days and you get poor support and help when you try to sort it out.  Uptime record and quality of service when things go wrong are the single two most important things, and the factors which serve to separate web hosts into the few you should use and the many you should avoid.

The only way to find out what you need to know about these aspects of web hosting companies is to check out what existing and past customers have said about them.  That is the reality and that is all that matters.