Web Hosting Guide: Are you going to start an online business? I have a question for you.
What is the first thing your online business MUST have?
Think!
Yeah, you’re right – It’s a website.
Today, businesses must have a website and an online presence.
As Bill Gates said,
“If your business is not on the internet, then your business is out of business.”
It’s very easy and affordable to build a website with the help of the CMS platform like WordPress.
If you’re a beginner and don’t aware about web hosting guide, this article will guide you to learn hosting concepts.
Let’s start!
Let’s begin with a website. You are familiar with this word, but do you know what is a website?
Here is a simple definition,
“A website is a collection of web pages which includes text, content, images, video, graphics, etc.”
According to Wikipedia,
This definition contains two words – Domain Name and Web Server.
Suppose, you have a website, but it’s not available on the Internet to the public around the world yet.
If you want your website accessible to the public you need a domain name and web server.
Having a website is like owning a house, you need some space for your house which is a web server.
You need to upload and store your web pages to a computer, this computer is called a web server. This server is connected to the World Wide Web (WWW).
And you need an address for your house so your friends, relatives, and visitors can visit you which is the domain name.
Domain name is your website address which shows your presence over the internet, for example, Facebbok.com, Yahoo.com etc.
Web Hosting
Web hosting means a website, blog, or web pages available to the public over the internet.
You must be wondering who is providing the web server?
A web server is provided by a web host or a web hosting provider company.
Web host is a hosting provider company which provides servers or space on a server to host webpages. Web hosts have their own servers or data centers.
Congrats, now your website available over the internet.
Let’s access some quick hosting facts:
Over 50% of websites today are hosted on either Apache or Nginx, both open source web servers.
Quick Note: Apache is One of the world’s most popular Web server programs. Apache was built by a group of open-source programmers and is often used because of its outstanding performance, strong security features and the fact that it is free.
WordPress is the most popular with business websites.
82% of companies reportedly saved money by moving to the cloud.
The average e-commerce site takes 7.12 seconds to load in Internet Explorer 9, an average of 7.15 seconds to load in Firefox 7 and an average of 7.5 seconds to load in Google Chrome. (Source)
Which hosting service you should opt?
A good hosting service is very important for any business. There are many hosting services are out there, such as Shared hosting, VPS server, dedicated server, or HostNamaste, etc.
You must choose the right and affordable hosting service for your website because it impacts your brand performance and productivity.
In shared hosting, one server is shared between multiple users and websites share server resources like RAM, processor, bandwidth, disk space, etc. It can handle a limited amount of traffic. You can choose this service if you just started a new business.
A dedicated server provides your own physical server for your website and you have full control over the server. It can handle large volume of traffic. But this is very expensive and small businesses can’t afford it.
Then what to do?
Your website is gaining popularity and a fine volume of traffic is coming on your site which option you should go for?
There’s a great choice for every size of business – Virtual Private Server.
VPS divides a physical server into multiple virtual servers. It’s also called virtual dedicated servers because only your website is stored on a virtual server.
You’ll get full control over your virtual server with dedicated IP, disk space, RAM, and bandwidth.
You don’t need to worry about downtime or data security. It’s the most popular hosting service among all size of businesses because it offers same features as Los Angeles dedicated servers at affordable price.
VPS can help you to improve your online presence & website ranking in Google SERP page. Google credits more to websites which have less downtime and great website speed.
There are two types of VPS servers:
- Unmanaged VPS
- Managed VPS
An unmanaged VPS hosting service is a solution that is completely under the control of the customer.
In managed VPS, web hosting guide provider company like GoDaddy, CTRLS, EuroVPS, will take care of your server, you don’t need to worry about maintenance of server, installation & configuration of applications that your website needs.
Make sure you compare the best VPS hosting companies in terms of their services and price before making your decision.
Why should you choose VPS solution?
- Quick and easy to setup
- You have full control over your server.
- Great website performance.
- You can upgrade your service, plan & resources according to your business needs.
- It will save your money.
- You’ll get dedicate resources like dedicated IP, RAM, Bandwidth, Disk space etc.
- VPS have multi-layered protection system, so your private data will be safe.
- Great website uptime.
The terminology used in the article:
Disk space: The amount of space allocated to you on the server to store files, pages, emails, and more.
Bandwidth: The amount of data that can be transmitted at a given moment to a server. The higher your bandwidth, the larger amount of traffic your site can handle at one time.
Uptime: The amount of time the server is uninterrupted and your website is running. Most of the web host offer 99.9% uptime guarantee.
I hope now you’re familiar with web hosting concept. Got a question? Please drop in the comment section below!