How Hosting Functions

If you have set up a site and you want other individuals to visit it, you must copy your web site files to a publicly reachable server.

Where to host your site?

Even though you can use your own PC as a server, it is a more common practice to let a hosting provider take care of your site. The prime reason for that is the greater reliability and the better visibility of your website, because web hosting service providers have high-end hardware and offer a much greater monthly traffic usage allowance, which guarantees the speedier access to your site from all over the world.

Hosting solutions

Select a hosting service, which allows you to register domains and to set up email mailboxes. Lots of web hosting corporations, like us at Just Value Hosting, offer a free-of-charge domain name registration as a bonus if you open an account.

Hosting your web site yourself

Hosting your site on your own web server is no doubt an option, but only in case you have time and the necessary know-how. There are some things that you need to take into consideration, including the hardware and software costs. To own a "real", proper site, you will need to spend cash on some powerful server hardware, since you cannot rely on a low-priced personal computer to do the job. You will also require an uninterrupted breakneck-speed connection without outages, which usually is offered at a pretty high price. If you are using licensed software for your website, you will have to invest cash in the license as well. You may also need to deal with bugs and software vulnerabilities. You will need to maintain your server constantly running in an environment where "everything could happen". If you do not have the needed technical ability, you will have to engage a system administrator to take care of these things on your behalf, which will render the price of hosting your web site on your own even higher than that of a dedicated web server offered by a hosting distributor.

A dedicated hosting web server provided by a hosting supplier

Leasing a dedicated web server from a web hosting vendor is a fine choice if you wish to build a heavy-traffic site or a corporate web portal that has very rigid security requirements. The main upsides of using a dedicated web hosting server are the breakneck-speed Internet connection, the uninterrupted power supply and the very powerful hardware. Some hosting companies, again like us at Just Value Hosting, provide VPS hosting and semi-dedicated server web hosting services, which are based on extremely powerful physical servers that can be shared by several clients. You can also expect them to offer effective load balancing solutions and the needed data backup servers.

Security and dependability

Hosting service providers are specialized in delivering hosting services and since this is what they do for a living, you can expect them to offer continuous website availability, the latest software patches and the best malware protection, as well as sysadmins available around the clock to support you in situations of emergency.

Select your web hosting supplier

What you have to consider when choosing your web hosting solutions provider is the reliability of the offered hosting services. Make sure that the web hosting solutions provider of your choice provides a 24/7/365 customer support service. Do not place yourself in a position where you cannot fix urgent predicaments instantly because you must wait till the next business day. What's more, if you select a shared website hosting plan, which includes a 24/7 support service, this signifies that there constantly will be sysadmins available to resolve any serious issues as soon as they appear, which is a very advantageous thing.

Daily backups

Make sure that your hosting packages provider offers routine data backups with the offered hosting services, or else you may lose some precious content in the event of a hardware failure or because you have deleted something unintentionally. The availability of day-to-day backups is usually pointed out in the hosting company's ToS.

Traffic and data storage space

When choosing your web hosting provider, give specific attention to the bandwidth amount limits. Make certain that you don't have to pay a fortune for unforeseen high bandwidth volumes if your web site becomes more popular. There are a lot of hosting vendors that offer unmetered web traffic at present, so the most reasonable step to take is to make certain that you have made the right decision prior to signing up.

Content restrictions

Give special attention to the hosting service provider's content restrictions. If you plan to post images or to broadcast video or audio content, make certain that you can accomplish that. Besides, the majority of web hosting companies impose limitations when it comes to utilizing their services for file hosting purposes, so if you upload too much content that is not related or directly linked to your web site, your user account could get erased. So, double-checking the hosting service provider's TOS, irrespective of how time-demanding and dull this might be, is extremely essential.

Email capabilities

Most hosting service providers nowadays also offer electronic mail services with all their web hosting plans. It is not a bad idea to check if the web hosting distributor of your choice offers such options too, so as to confirm that you'll receive all the features that you need in return for your cash.