Low cost hosting

Web page hosting is something that every single web page on the internet has to have since web hosting services are required to have your site seen on the internet. If you want to host a web page on the internet, you will have to wade through thousands of hosting companies in order to find one to suit your needs.

If you are not armed with knowledge of web hosting terminology and technology, how can you possibly make an educated decision on which company should host your web page?

First, you should learn about the different types of web page hosting that are available on the internet. There are a lot of different kinds of web hosting but there are the most common ones used by web pages on the internet.

Shared Web Hosting
With shared web page hosting, numerous web pages are hosted on the same web server. All of these pages will share the same resources available on the server such as internet connection, hard drive space, CPU speed, RAM, etc.

While this is the most common kind of web hosting, it can be dangerous for a professional business because of the sometimes unreliable nature of shared web page hosting.

Virtual Dedicated Server
Virtual dedicated servers are also called virtual private servers. With this type of web hosting account, you are still sharing a server with other web pages but this time you have your own piece of the server’s resources that are dedicated to your site.

In all other aspects, it functions just like a dedicated server where you generally have your own IP address, can host numerous web pages, and have root access to your server.

Dedicated Server Hosting
A dedicated server hosting account is where you have an entire web server that only you get to use and you do not have to share anything with any other web pages.

Dedicated web hosting servers are offered in a number of different formats to suit the needs of a client. You usually get to choose the server specifications depending on your budget.

Colocation dedicated servers are purchased instead of leased servers that are maintained, connected to the internet and stored by a web hosting company.

Dedicated servers are generally assumed to be leased servers where you make a monthly payment to the web hosting service to have use of the web server.

Managed dedicated servers are higher priced leased servers that are managed and controlled by a web hosting company similar to the way a shared hosting account would be managed. Managed dedicated servers do not receive root access but will keep you from landing in a situation where you have messed up a server setting by playing around with something you didn’t have the knowledge to be doing.

Unmanaged dedicated servers are for webmasters that have the knowledge to maintain and even perform software updates to their own web server. This is the cheapest web server leasing option available but you will be responsible for your own machine.

Web Page Hosting Technologies
It is also important that you have a thorough understanding of web hosting technologies before you proceed with purchasing your web hosting account. Again, this is not a complete listing of the different technologies used by web servers and web site hosts, but they are the most important features that you should know about when choosing a web host.

Web Hosting Control Panels
There are actually quite a few different control panel software systems being used by hosting companies these days. Some of these control panels are designed by the companies using them so they can limit access to certain features of their choosing. Other control panels are widely used, powerful pieces of software that give you full control over your web site and the newest technologies available.

It is essential that you select a web hosting service that will give you full access to your site or else you may find yourself needing features that are not available to you. This is especially true when you start trying to install software scripts on your site.

CPanel is probably the most widely used web hosting control panel and is the recommended control panel that you should look for when selecting a hosting service provider.

Web Page Programming Languages and Databases
It is absolutely essential that you are aware of what programming languages and databases you may want to use before you choose a web host. Different scripts that are used for sites on the internet may only be compatible with specific versions of programming languages and databases.

Once you have determined what programming languages and databases you will need, you can search out a web host that can provide you with what your web site will need to run properly. Different web servers will have different versions of programming languages and databases installed on them, so you want to be sure that you will have access to the versions that you need.

All web pages use some sort of HTML and possibly CSS as well. HTML tells the web browser what to show the user while CSS will add style to various elements on the page.

Javascript, PHP and ASP are some of the most common programming languages used by web pages. If you are going to be running a script written in ASP, you want to be sure to get a web page hosting company that can offer you the windows operating system because ASP does not run under Linux.

MySQL is generally viewed as being the best and most widely used database software. It can handle enormous amounts of information and is used by some of the largest, most popular web sites on the internet such as Wikipedia, Facebook and even Google.

Web Hosting Operating Systems
While you may be inclined to choose a windows web hosting account because you use windows on your home computer, you may want to reconsider unless you are going to be running scripts written in ASP. Linux is the dominating operating system on the internet and most scripts will work best under that environment. Many people also argue that Linux servers produce a faster loading page than windows servers.

Web Page Hosting Bandwidth and Hard Drive Limits
A lot of web page hosting service providers are offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth these days, but it is still important to make sure that is what you are signing up for before you select a web host.

Almost all brand new web sites will not have to worry about exceeding bandwidth and hard drive space limits at first, but it is something that you want to be sure to pay attention to because your web page hosting account can be suspended if you reach these limits. If your site is suspended, all web traffic to it will be blocked.

Shared hosting is no longer an option. Your website receives now a lot of traffic and there are quite a few visitors online making SQL requests in the same time. Your web host is concerned that you are hogging the shared server and make the other customers unhappy. They are asking you to move to a VPS or a dedicated server.

This is a common scenario and a desired one; the need for an upgrade usually means that your website has become popular. Let’s see what VPS hosting is, what is the difference between VPS and dedicated web hosting and let’s try to figure out what’s the best solution.

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server and can be the first step from “leaving” shared hosting, if you don’t want to manage a dedicated server. Virtual Private Servers provide you with root level access to the server while having the simplicity of a shared hosting account. VPS hosting is usually cheaper than dedicated hosting even if you’re not in charge of managing the server, but that’s because dedicated servers usually have better hardware configurations.

The VPS is like a dedicated server except that you “own” only a part of the server’s resources (CPU, RAM, etc.). This is done by creating “layers”; at the base resides the standard host operating system, next is the virtualization layer with a proprietary file system and a kernel service abstraction layer that ensure isolation and security of resources between different virtual environments. The virtualization layer makes each virtual environment appear as a standalone server. Finally, the virtual environment itself houses the application or workload.

So, the main difference VPS-dedicated is that with a VPS plan, you will still be sharing the physical resources (but you will enjoy the freedom of a private server) compared with a dedicated plan where you have the web server all to yourself. If you are at the “limits” of your shared account, maybe a VPS is a better benefits/costs choice than a dedicated account, because you don’t need yet a whole server. If you estimate a rapid growth of the website then consider jumping directly to dedicated to avoid moving again in the near future.

Besides the requirements of standard web hosting plans, Web hosting for e-commerce operation needs a shopping cart that supports online catalog and online payment processing.

Standard Web Hosting Plans

Standard hosting plans varies in terms of programming languages, operating systems and server performance. The commonly used web development languages include PHP, ASP, JSP and PERL. The hosting plans that support those programming languages are referred as PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.
Once you’ve picked up the programming language(s) for your Web development, you still have freedom to choose the operating system that hosts your Websites. Besides ASP which works only on Microsoft Windows, PHP, JSP and PERL work on Windows, Unix and Linux. Hosting plans that support particular operating systems are referred as Window Hosting, Unix Hosting or Linux hosting. When webmasters are talking about Web servers, they’re most interested in the server performance – Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and you can host as many sites as you like with a Reseller Hosting option. VPS costs around $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan will cost from $50 – $100 or more a month dependent on storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

E-commerce Web Hosting Plans

Evaluation of e-commerce web hosting plans involves investigation of needed functionality and price comparison of each plan. The comparison of functionality is straight forward, but the comparison of cost for different e-commerce hosting solutions is little bit tricky. Different hosting plans may have different free structures. The cost of each hosting plan often varies on transaction volume. EBay Stores, Yahoo! Store and Microsoft bCentral are the most popular turn-key commerce solutions for small businesses that want to setup online stores easily and fast.

When comparing functionality, there’re many questions to ask: 1) whether a shopping cart accepts online check or eCheck beside support on online credit card and paypal for payment options; 2) whether there’s a limit on the number of products and categories that you can setup; 3) whether it automatically sends out an email notification once an order is placed successfully.

When looking at the cost of commerce operation, you’ll need to ask questions about 1) what’s the basic monthly subscription fee; 2) whether there’s a setup fee for a new online store; 3) whether you have to pay for the addition of new items to the product catalog; 4) how much it charges for each transaction. High volume sites may prefer the plans that charge a higher monthly-fee but a lower fee on each transaction, while low volume sites work better with hosting plans that charge zero or low monthly fee and initial setup fees but a slightly higher fee on each transaction.