You have likely heard of the words “web hosting,” but you might not know what it actually means. In fact, many people do not know what it is when they first start thinking about blogging or creating a website.
Web hosting is a type of place where everyone’s websites and information is stored. The web host is typically a company or individual with the capabilities to store many websites in one place. You can think of web hosting like a house that is filled with all of your personal belongings. If your web host goes down, so does your website.
Usually, when someone refers to web hosting, they are talking about the company that is essentially renting out their servers to place their website on. Some web hosting companies include GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost, and others.
What Types of Web Hosting Are There?
There are four main types of web hosting that is available to an individual. For example, there is cloud hosting, virtual private servers, shared hosting, and dedicated hosting. The type you choose will depend on your needs and the needs of your website.
For instance, if you plan to run an e-commerce store, it may be better for you to have a dedicated server to keep all of your products on and to run credit cards through. A company that does not have a store or does not need to process credit cards will be able to use a shared web hosting option.
Tips for Choosing a Web Hosting Company
Before you choose a web hosting company for your website, you want to make sure you do your research. In fact, did you know that if your host’s server goes down, your site will go down?
It is vital that you choose a web host company that has a positive up time. For instance, HostGator has a 99% or more up time rate, which is excellent when you need to know that your website will be available.
The next thing you need to look for is a web hosting company that does not limit the amount of space you can have or if they do, that the amount of space they offer is enough to meet your needs. Most general sites will require less than 5MB, but if you find that your web hosting company only offers 2MB, you need to look somewhere else.
Next, you should look into the web hosting company a bit more and find out if there are any bandwidth limits for your site. Unfortunately, many hosting companies will put a cap on how many users or how much traffic can come into your site each month and sometimes per day. You should double check to make sure these limitations are not restricting you or blocking some of your readers from making it to your site.
If you plan to choose a web host to run your domain and website, make sure that you choose a reliable and dependable company that has more uptime than downtime.