An explanation of website hosting
The most elemental and commonly availed of variety of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It's a way to host your site without having to know much about programming and operating a hosting server. In addition to this, it's also the cheapest form of web space hosting and it's indeed affordable for everybody. Nevertheless, what is shared hosting?
What is shared website hosting?
As the name signifies, the shared web space hosting solution is a type of service where many users share the resources of the same hosting server. This indicates that all hosting server elements such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network interface cards etc. are distributed among the users whose accounts are on that very same web hosting server. This is mainly made viable by setting up separate accounts for the separate customers and imposing certain limitations and usage quotas for each of them. Those limits are set in order to prevent the customers from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the server from overloading. Normally, shared web hosting customers do not have root-level access to the hosting server's config files, which principally signifies that they cannot access anything else on the web server beside their own shared hosting account. The web space hosting features that each account may resort to are determined by the web hosting supplier that owns the web hosting server and by the given website hosting package. That leads up to the second vital question:
How are the shared web hosting servers shared among the users?
Web hosting corporations that distribute shared web site hosting services typically have diverse website hosting packages. Those packages involve diverse quotas of web space hosting features and specs, which actually fix the restrictions that a web site hosting account will include. The customer may pick between the different web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he deems will befit him best. The web site hosting plan will then define what restrictions the customer's account will involve, once set up. The costs and the specifications of the web hosting plans are fixed by the actual web hosting company. Based on the policy of the provider, the shared website hosting solution falls into two types - the free hosting solution and the standard shared solution, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" corporations as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to claim, which one is better, since they are very different from one another and they indeed are subject to the marketing tactics of the particular distributor and, of course, the needs of the specific user.
What is the contrast between the free of charge and the normal shared web page hosting solution?
Of course, the principal difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the quantity of resources that they offer. Free web space hosting suppliers are not able to maintain a large number of web servers, therefore, they simply host more clients on one web hosting server by reducing the amount of system resources offered by the accounts. This will be effective only on condition that the hosting servers are kept under surveillance and tackled appropriately, since the large amount of accounts may cause the web hosting server to crash on a regular basis. Most of the free web site hosting distributors, however, neglect the quality of the service and hence, it's quite hard to come across a free of charge hosting service that's in fact worth the effort. The top free hosting companies usually offer free client support even to the free site hosting users, since they want their web sites to get bigger so that they eventually migrate to a paid hosting account, which includes more site hosting resources. One such vendor, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the biggest and oldest free webspace hosting providers in the world.
At the same time, traditional shared web hosting vendors such as Grand Lex Design, for example, are able to maintain many servers and as a result, they are able to offer much more powerful hosting plans. Of course, that reflects on the cost of the web hosting packages. Paying a higher fee for a web space hosting package, though, does not automatically mean that this solution has a better quality. The most optimal services are the balanced ones, which involve a price that corresponds to the concrete service which you're receiving. The first-class webspace hosting companies that have been around for quite some time are showing their price tags and package configurations in a realistic fashion, so that the client may acquainted with what exactly he is getting. Additionally, some of these offer a free bonus with the web site hosting plan, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of complimentary web page skins that are offered by 'Grand Lex Design'. Such site hosting providers do care about their good name and this is the reason why if you go with them, you can be calm that you won't get fooled into purchasing a package that you cannot in fact make use of.
What should I anticipate from a shared site hosting service?
The shared webspace hosting solution is best for those who desire to host a standard website, which is going to utilize a small or medium amount of web traffic each month. You cannot expect, however, that a shared web page hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, because as your business gets bigger, your site will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to ultimately upgrade to a more powerful web space hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when picking a hosting vendor, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a different distributor, which can bring about web site predicaments and even continuous downtime for your website. So, selecting a web site hosting vendor such as 'Grand Lex Design', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is vital and will spare you a lot of problems in the long run.