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submitted: Aug 17th 2008 | by: MattHedges | Total views: 2 | Word Count: 1138 | |

Due to the rapid speed of success achieved by web hosting companies, web hosting services have become a trend in online business. A web hosting company hosts your website, whether personal or professional. It can also provide you with a host of benefits, and to add to it, your to-be employers might also appreciate seeing your details from your own website, rather than from any other place. Internet has emerged as a great medium for conducting business, and a website is a prerequisite for this purpose, which facilitates the need of a web hosting company. To make such things work, a webmaster must be aware of how important web hosting is.

Paid hosting, free hosting, file web hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting and clustered hosting are some of the many types of web hosting. Choose among these available ones while selecting your web host which is appropriate for your demands and requirements.

Following are the three common kinds of web hosting:

Shared hosting

A shared host is a server which supports many web pages. A shared host is generally the best for a business where the expenses does not permit them to go for the dedicated web hosting services, and a shared hosting helps them save a lot of unnecessary expenses as well.

In case of shared hosting, various maintenance features like server management, security updates, server software and anti-virus backup are provided by the provider of the shared hosting.

Web hosting can be conducted in two basic ways: based on the IP address and based on the name. In the former case, the host having his unique IP address provides every website that he hosts with their individual SSL certificates, which gives the website owners a lot of security. In case of the latter way, a lot of websites which the provider hosts are assigned just one IP address, which everyone uses.

A shared web hosting is cheap, no doubt, but it doesn't have the level of security offered by the IP-based web hosting.

The name-based web hosting system has other drawbacks as well. They are not fully compatible with old browsers. So an HTTP/1.0 browser will be unable to send requests which carry the name of the host, unless they are upgraded. Due to the fact that they share a common digital certificate, they even cannot support HTTPS websites. It becomes impossible to access them if the Domain Name System chokes out a website which a name-based web server hosts.

Despite the cost effectiveness of a shared web hosting system, some of its other problems are that of disk space, CPU and Bandwidth of your website being affected or slowed down because of other sites using the same server. Control over certain system level things like scripts and the system software being used is also beyond your control if you are on a shared hosting system. But if your website is relatively small you can comfortably make do without such features. If such things do bother you and you want some control over the things that power your website, you might want to know about Virtual Private Server or VPS.

Virtual Private Server

The software of the divides it into many 'virtual machines' though it has a single server like a shared server. Each such VPS gets their own allotted RAM, disc space etc though the server's total resources are still shared by the various websites being hosted. Using the allocated resources, each operates completely independently.

You can do various things as you are granted this much greater freedom when compared to a shared host. These different things range from running a totally different OS to having your own scripts and choice of software, without disturbing the other sites on the server.

The liberties associated with dedicated servers are nearly identical to the root level access to the main server that you get in a VPS. At a comparatively lesser price than a dedicated server, you can install your preferred software; create accounts etc in a VPS.

The sense of security of a VPS system is much greater than a shared hosting service because of the internal division of the former. All sites are at risk a shared hosting service if the main server is hacked into. On the other hand, this is not the case in a VPS system.

The server division normally occurs evenly; the websites getting an equal share of the total resources. So if a VPS server hosts a dozen of websites, then every item like RAM, disk space etc. will be shared equally among all the 12 websites.

Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated hosting facilities are meant for individuals and big businesses who are eager to take control of not only their websites but also the functioning process of the web host. A dedicated server offers people the benefit of doing that because as the name suggests, in this case a single website is hosted by a single server. The freedom ad control here is manifold, as the website owner has only to look into the web software related matters and can exercise his freedom as far as that is concerned. While other issues like security, power supervision and data maintenance etc are looked after by the hosting company.

If your website requirements are large bandwidth, greater resources like disk space and if you are looking for a high quality, customized server, opting for a dedicated host seems to be the perfect solution. You can then choose a host of features for your website like operating system, settings, software and multi-media necessities. A dedicated hosting service is also the answer to all those who cannot afford to purchase a server of their own, but want similar services.

A dedicated server can also bail you out and save expenses up to 85%, if your website has a high traffic count but you do not have the monitory resources and technical know how to maintain, install and run your own IT staff, programs that will run everything smoothly and most of all if you can't pay for a network administrator.

Security is no longer an issue with dedicated server at the helm of all affairs, since you would be the sole user of a server. Even downtime problems are eliminated because of this unique access to the server. Those companies which need to have a database of clients and such other information on their website feel more secure on a dedicated server.

While shared web hosts come cheaper, they also come with the heavy burdens of ominous security concerns and accessibility concerns if other sites face heavy traffic at any point. Using a dedicated server might cost a lot more, but provides you with the comfort and knowledge that you are using a thousand time safer server and one that shouldn't be slowed down by traffic of other websites. A dedicated server, therefore, is perfect for those looking to expand and grow in their businesses.

About the Author

Republished with permission from WebHostingMadness.com, a provider of web hosting company reviews, comparisons and detailed articles about the web hosting industry.

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