What is web hosting?

The notion of web hosting means the service of placing at somebody’s disposal the disk space on the server which is constantly accessible in the World Wide Web.

What is web server?

If we understand the web server as hardware, then the web server is a computer with a heightened reliability and productivity designed for definite tasks. Also, the web server means the program supplement receiving customers’ inquiries. If you decided to create your website, you must place it somewhere. You must do it in such a manner that the files your website is made of were accessible for the World Wide Web users. Just for that you will need the web hosting. Certainly, for big and complicated projects or, if you have many of them, you may need a dedicated web server. You can rent the web server that is, the web server will be situated at a person who will rent you the web server and you will be able to operate it. In this case you will not need to create conditions for its functioning such as a separate high-speed access channel in the internet or, for example, uninterrupted supply of the web server with electric energy. The separated web server will allow you to place on it many different program modules and components necessary for you. Besides this you will be able to place many websites on it. How ever, you must posses some additional knowledge so as to administer the web server or pay for the services of the specialist who will administer it for you. For most of the projects the possibilities of the shared web hosting service are enough and dedicated web server is not needed. So, you decided that it will be enough for you to buy the shared web hosting service.

What is then?

Then you must decide what type of web hosting you will use – requiring payment or free, that is a rent-free. We do not recommend you to use the free web hosting. As a rule, the rent- free web hosting does not include those possibilities which the paid web hosting possesses. For example, usually there is no support CGI, Perl, PHP, ASP, htaccess, database and FTP connection on the free web hosting. Besides this, in the conditions of the free web hosting the allocation of the third persons advertising is usually envisaged. If you decided to use the paid web hosting, then you must determine the web hosters, whose services you are going to use. Certainly, if you do not create the web site yourself, but somebody else creates it for you, the person working out your web site also may himself render the services of the web hosting or will recommend concrete web hoster.Such recommendations will be possibly useful for you; however, we advise you to compare the conditions of web hosting rendering by the recommended web hoster with other web hosters.

You must compare the following indices:

• Support CGI, Perl, PHP, ASP, htaccess (for Apaches), databases and FTP connections;

• The size of the disk space, the amount of the monthly traffic, the number of websites which can be placed in the hosting frame as a single service, the number of possible email accounts, the number of databases and the size of disc space for the databases;

• The cost of the basic and additional services (for example, for the exceeded monthly traffic);

Maybe some of the above-mentioned indices of the web hosting are not needed for you at all, for example, if you want to create a simple website consisting only of HTML pages. In any case, the web hosting must be reliable, that is your site must be constantly accessible in the internet and it certainly must be as cheap as possible. Also, when choosing the provider of internet services, one should pay attention to the cost of the services during the next period. Some web hosters purposely lower the cost of their services within the first months so as to attract customers, but lately the cost of the services increases. The cost of the web hosting services differs considerably among different web hosters. It ranges from several US dollars per month to several hundreds of US dollars and even more. Hence, according to our own experience we can recommend GoDaddy.com. Web hosting granted by GoDaddy.com is reliable and cheap. You can also register the domain name for your website. The web hosting and domain name bought from GoDaddy.com will cost you starting at just $45 / year, which, according to our experience, is even cheaper than among less reliable providers of the web hosting services.