Notice
Shared Web Hosting Revealed: What You Need to Know
Shared web hosting is just one of the many types of solutions offering website hosting providers online. While it may not be suitable for all needs, it is usually a great place to start for new website or blog owners until their needs exceed the limitations of a shared web hosting plan.
In this article, we will take a look at what a shared website hosting plan really is and whether it is suitable for your own particular needs.
What is Shared Website Hosting?
This is when many website owners share the resources of the same server (hosting computer). These include will include the disk space (how much information or file size you can use), bandwidth (how much traffic you can get at a time) and others. But because you are sharing does not necessarily mean that you are all using the same amount of disk space or bandwidth. One website may have bigger file sizes uploaded to the server, while another site may have more traffic than the others.
Advantages of Shared Web Hosting
Some of the advantages of using shared website hosting include:
- Affordability: If an advert for a website hosting plan is somewhere around ten dollars, it is most likely that it is shared. But if you are just starting out or do not have a lot of financial resources to spare at the beginning, going with a shared website hosting plan will help you launch your website without tearing into your savings or punching a hole through your pocket.
- Simplicity: Dedicated, Cloud and Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting all require a certain level of technical knowledge (or at least a stubborn willingness to learn) because you will have to do a lot of the technical management yourself. But in shared web hosting, you do not have to deal with any of the extra technical details except for uploading for website files and updating your website content periodically. There is a lot of ease and simplicity when you use a shared website hosting plan.
·
- Learning Experience: When you start off with shared web hosting, you also get to learn a lot of things along the way such as how to use FTP, how to manage your websites, and so on. This way, once you are ready or need to upgrade to a more sophisticated or technical plan, you won’t have a lot of trouble managing it yourself. So, its simplicity affords you the opportunity to learn about proper website management before you become overwhelmed with it because you never know how to handle it your self.
Downsides of Shared Web Hosting
· Not Suitable for High-traffic Sites: If you are running or think your site will quickly become a high-traffic magnet, you should plan early and choose a hosting provider that has an upgrade plan to a dedicated or VPS plan later on, or just start with a dedicated plan at the very beginning right away.
· Not for high-bandwidth consumption sites [SN, document-sharing, video-sharing, etc.]: If you run a social network, a document-sharing site or a video-sharing site, using a shared website hosting plan may cause more than your fair share of your website traffic bandwidth. In order to avoid your ISP from shutting your website because it is on a shared server, you should plan early and upgrade to a more sophisticated plan as soon as you can to prevent a downtime, disappoint users or lose sales.
2 Things to Look for in a Shared Web Hosting Provider
So, what should you look out for when shopping for a shared web hosting provider? Here are a number of crucial criteria to take into consideration.
- Reliable Support: With a shared website hosting plan, you are likely going to have to rely on the hosting provider’s technical support team to help you with any issues that you may have with your website. This is because you do not have administrative access to the resources of the server that you have your site hosted on.
So, check to see that their technical support is reliable and available round the clock as you don’t know when you will need them to help fix a problem that originates from the server.
Better still, it would be great if they have Live Support since sometimes you may need help right away and may not have the patience for an email that will arrive 24 hours later.
- Reputation: Also, check online and ask around to make sure that the web host has a lot of positive feedback from its users and other online forums, etc. This will go a long way in helping to make sure that you don’t gamble your website and its future by falling into the waiting trap of a bad web host.
Whether you are just starting out or do not have a lot of money to spare, a shared website hosting plan is the best option for you. To take look at what one of the best web hosting providers can offer you, go to [AFF LINK HERE to HL page with details, etc.]
Web Hosting Explained: All You Need About Website Hosting in 5 Minutes or Less
Web hosting may seem to be difficult to understand, especially if you are new to designing, developing and maintaining websites on the Internet. But at least a basic knowledge of how website hosting works is necessary if you want to make the best out of your website both for you and for your site visitors and users.
In this piece, we will touch briefly, but comprehensively, on what website hosting really is and the major types that you will see mentioned everywhere on forums, in magazines and by technocrats and entrepreneurs alike.
What is Web Hosting?
As you already know a website is basically is a collection of interlinked files (documents, pictures, videos, audio, etc.) that can be navigated through the use of links. But these files don’t just “live” anywhere; they are stored on a remote computer known as a web server (or as most times referred to as, a server.) The process and act of storing the files that make up your website on a web server is known as Web Hosting or Website Hosting. People can then visit your website and access your website files (provided you allow them to) for as long as it is hosted on the server.
There are different types of website hosting. They all do the same basic thing of storing your website files on a remote server and providing access to them when your website visitors request them. But there are also some remarkable differences in how they utilize resources and technologies to accomplish this. Below are some of the most common types of web hosting.
- Shared Web Hosting: Shared Website Hosting is when you and other webmasters share the resources of the same server to host your websites. You do not have to know each other either to share. This is one of the most popular types of web hosting. Usually, you just sign up to a web hosting provider and they assign you to a server and give you certain amount of disk space, memory, bandwidth and other resources to use for your own website. The advantage of this is that it is usually very cheap and simple to run. The downside is that your website may be affected if one of the webmasters you are sharing the same server with uploads a script that affects the server you and using. Security is therefore, not the most reliable with shared web hosting. But if all you want is to host your blog or simple website, this may be all you need.
- Dedicated Hosting: Unlike shared hosting, dedicated hosting offers you the luxury of offering you your own dedicated (private, for your own use only) web server to host your website on. Think of it as having your own laptop instead of sharing with others when you go to the library. With dedicated web hosting, there is increased security and flexibility in uploading many types of software packages that you normally would not be able or allowed to if you were using shared web hosting. But you also have to be ready to pay a little more for these benefits.
- VPS Hosting: Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting refers to when you share the same physical web server with other webmasters. But in this case, each server is partitioned (divided) into independent servers using a special type of software known as virtualization software. As a result, each component now acts, and is treated, as if it is an independent server. Thus, when another person installs a script that messes up their website or server space, you are not affected. Your own VPS (or Virtual Private Server, as each resulting component is called) will have its own dedicated and independent disk space, memory, bandwidth and other resources. VPS Hosting is great for webmasters who have outgrown (or do not wish to use) shared web hosting but are also not interested in resorting to dedicated hosting. It costs a little more than shared hosting but not as much as dedicated web hosting. But it also provides increased security, privacy and flexibility than shared web hosting.
- Cloud Hosting: Cloud Hosting is when your website is hosted on a network of servers instead of just being stored on one physical server. The advantage of this is that even if one of the servers in the network fails, your website will still be running without glitches since the other servers in the Cloud (network) will serve all requests for your website by visitors and users. With Cloud Hosting, you are also provided with all the software packages that you need so that you do not have to worry about incurring more costs to buy pieces of software (or hardware) technology that you may not end up using regularly. Instead, you are involved in a “pay-per-use” system where you are only billed for the resources that you use instead of being allocated resources that you may end up not using. In this sense, it saves you from needlessly spending your money when you don’t have to. So, while it may cost you a little more than shared web hosting to use Cloud Hosting, you are also assured of extra security, server reliability and uptime and access to more resources at your disposal.
Whatever the type of needs you have, there is website hosting plan that may suit you. To choose the best for you, determine your needs and then pick one of the type of web hosting above that you feel will serve your needs the most.
Beginners
If this is your first Joomla site or your first web site, you have come to the right place. Joomla will help you get your website up and running quickly and easily.
Start off using your site by logging in using the administrator account you created when you installed Joomla!.
Upgraders
If you are an experienced Joomla! 1.5 user, 1.6 will seem very familiar. There are new templates and improved user interfaces, but most functionality is the same. The biggest changes are improved access control (ACL) and nested categories.