The sole purpose of developing a website is to get it online to gain more revenues or generate a significant user base. Therefore, if you have a website that can support your business, you will always yearn to see it online and therefore need web hosting.

All doesn’t end at the web development stage – it is crucial to understand the dimensions that require you to host the website. Making your website available to customers and other users only requires considering reliable hosting. If you have never heard of web hosting, you need to worry less. We shall address web hosting in all dimensions since it entails broader concepts. If you need to extensively explore web hosting, keep reading because we’ve curated this piece just for you.

Let’s first dive into the metrics and fundamentals of web design.

Understanding web hosting

As initially stated, a well-developed website needs to be live online, therefore the need for hosting. It is thus a process where a web hosting provider offers some web server space that will store website databases, related files, and folders. It is, therefore, crucial to understand that every website you see live on the online sphere gets some hosting space on some server. Hosting occurs differently, and thus the need to understand different types of web hosting. Some common types include WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated server hosting, and shared hosting. Going for a web hosting service means setting your website live and available to customers and users. Online users can search for your website’s domain name, and the server responds by fetching the website and making it public. Usually, most websites greatly rely on rented server space because servers can be too expensive and difficult to implement at a personal level. Therefore, a web hosting company’s role is to provide space access at some price. A server isn’t something complex but a physical computer ensuring the accessibility of websites hosted under it without any difficulties. A server is, therefore, a composition of hardware with software installed. Lastly, free DNS allows users to manage their domain names & direct traffic to the correct servers without incurring additional costs.

The working principles behind web hosting

You might wonder about the work behind web hosting. It is not this technical thing that will give you headaches every time – web hosting is simple. Usually, hosted websites lie and depend on servers that are not some robotics machines in space. A server is simply some powerful physical computer that continuously takes in requests and serves web pages of your hosted websites. Upon request, which means the user searches the website’s domain on a search engine, the web hosting provider’s server loads to fetch all the necessary files related to the website. It then serves the pages upon request or serves the requested web pages.

Thus, the hosting provider must implement a robust set of technologies to ensure optimal security and consistent running of the server. Apart from safety and consistency in the provision of hosting services, the web hosting provider will consistently implement technologies for the complex management of various server tasks.

Differences between hosting and domain

As you go through the entire web hosting process, you will never miss out on essential terms such as hosting and domain. Often, people mix up these terms because of their related functional roles. In this piece, let’s establish crucial differences between this technical jargon. In seeking hosting services, you’ll always have to sign up for web hosting plans – these plans vary based on the web hosting providers. However, as you sign up for related web hosting plans, you will always need to specify a unique domain name for your website. Therefore, you must establish a good domain name that users will get and think of quickly. However, most web hosting providers will always give you options of the available domain names you can choose. Therefore, as discussed initially, web hosting is a service that allows you to store web files on some server space. A domain is a unique identifier (a name), your website’s unique address. Once you host your website and the domain name is made public, users can easily search for the website, and the server will fetch the rightful webpage to serve it to the user. It is also crucial to note that apart from paid plans, hosting providers allow free domain names along with their hosting plans. Therefore, you must carefully choose your domain name as it is an excellent marketing element for your website.

Different types of web hosting services

Even though discussed in the previous sections of this piece, it is crucial to emphasize that web hosting services vary. Therefore, you can always opt for different types of web hosting based on your needs, budget, and other requirements. Usually, the hosting plans vary closely and primarily to some extent due to the differences in uniqueness and specifications. So, let’s dive into these types of web hosting without further ado.

WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting is always shared with WordPress developers. Therefore, WordPress websites will always require this hosting. Thus, the optimization of this hosting type zeros down to specific websites – WordPress sites.

Reseller Hosting

It entails renting out the server and its related resources from the hosting provider as a form of reselling it to other clients to gain more revenue. Most web hosting service providers will provide cheap reseller hosting services that will help you generate income through resource provision under your name.

Virtual Private Server hosting (VPS hosting)

It is one of the most significant hosting types that implement broader use of virtualization technologies in hosting websites. It entails splitting up a single physical server into various virtual private servers by allocating crucial resources like disk space, RAM, and CPU. Therefore, it is among the best options when you want your website to enjoy good speeds, performance, and security. From New York VPS to VPS solutions, you have access to endless options. Furthermore, if you need high traffic on your website, this is the correct type of web hosting.

Dedicated Hosting

It entails acquiring the server in its exclusiveness to your website. With this type of hosting, sharing server resources isn’t possible. The server serves a single website wholly. It is among the most effective plans you can consider when hosting – a good choice for powerful and complex websites.

Shared Hosting

It is among the common types of hosting where a single server supports a set of websites. With shared hosting, sharing resources is common among users and the server itself. Shared hosting is a perfect option, especially when you want to host a website with less traffic at a cheaper budget. Once you subscribe to a shared hosting plan, you get a control panel where you can always manage different aspects of your account. It would help if you always had primary control of your website through the control panel. All technical server aspects and implementations are services under your web hosting provider.

Cloud Hosting

Traditional hosting often occurs with the deployment of a website on a single server. However, cloud hosting is quite different – you deploy a website on a cluster of connected physical and virtual servers. Here, losing the website files isn’t any more accessible and thus confirms the greater extent of resilience, security, and scalability available for the cloud hosting option.

Key elements to consider in a web hosting provider

With a proper understanding of the fundamental basis of web hosting, you will now have to select the best web hosting provider. Any web hosting provider can host your website, but everyone wants the best. Therefore, it is crucial to highlight key elements to guide you in choosing the best web hosting provider. Pointers to help you get an ideal web hosting provider include:

Uptime provisioning

Consistent user access to your website is one of the best things you should consider. It is, therefore, crucial to consider the web host’s uptime. Let the web hosting provider assure you of a stable uptime for your website. Web hosting providers have an ongoing strategy to get the website up even when it’s down for some minutes. Remember, when a high revenue generating goes down for some time, you might likely experience heavy losses, thus the need to consider uptime as a priority.

Security

Security is a crucial entity, especially since websites store vital information. Therefore, always ensure that your web hosting provider goes further to guarantee continued security to your website. The hosting providers mainly provide SSL certificates to reinforce web security from breaches and threats.

Other crucial factors include cost and customer support under the web hosting providers. Both the former should be affordable and the latter reliable.

Conclusion

Preparing your website does not end at the web development stage. You will need to host your website to make it available in the online space to enhance its accessibility to users. Thus, you must consider the different hosting plans above and get your website up and running. It is also vital that you choose your web hosting provider effectively to smoothen the availability of your website ahead of time.

To know more about web hosting connect with Aalpha & get free consultation.