What Is The Definition Of Web Hosting – What A Web Host Does and How To Choose A Good One

If you are new to the wonderful world of websites, you may have come across the term web hosting, but perhaps not fully understand what it is.  Every website needs a web host in order for it to be available online for visitors to see it.  If you create a website, you can do this on your own computer at home, but if you want it to be seen on the internet you have to upload it to a server, which is a powerful computer where all your web pages are stored.  From here anyone with your website address can find it and view your pages.  The company who provide the server for you are your web host.

Web hosting is a specialist business that involves the provision of computer space where people can pay to have their websites stored. As well as the basic storage of web pages, the web host has to enable your pages and files to be downloaded by visitors to your site.  This service is known as the provision of ‘bandwidth’.  Whenever someone views a page on your website, they are downloading the information stored on the web host’s server, so there is a transfer of data.  Bandwidth is just a measure of data transfer over a certain period of time.

There is a direct cost involved in both storing your pages and allowing them to be downloaded, so web hosts will charge you based on how much storage and data transfer you require.  If you look at the various packages available on any web hosting site, you will see that there are normally different options which include varying amounts of ‘disc space’ (storage) and ‘bandwidth’ (data transfer).

You will select the most appropriate disc space allocation based on how big your site is likely to be.  The more pages and files you have the more disc space you will need to store it.  Certain file types, such as images, take up a lot more storage space than others.  You choose how much bandwidth you need based on how busy you expect your site to be, and what type of data is going to be downloaded.  For example, if you have a website that contains lots of video files, that is going to require a lot of bandwidth.

When looking for a web hosting company, you will obviously need to check what packages are available and look for an appropriate level of bandwidth and disc space, but there are other important considerations too.  The most important of these is how reliable the web host is in terms of keeping websites online and in dealing with queries and technical problems.  With any web host you are going to have to contact their support staff, even if just to answer questions or queries, and how good this service is can make all the difference to your experience.  An unreliable host could leave you with your website frequently off-line and no quick answers or solutions when you ask for help.

The best way to check out the reliability of hosting companies is to seek reviews or recommendations based on previous customer experience.  Whatever they say they will do for you counts as nothing compared to what an existing customer tells you they have actually done.