Things To Consider While Selecting Web Hosting

Web hosting is the act of storing a website’s data on a server or series of servers. Imagine a website as a work of art. That art needs to be housed somewhere for people to see, and web hosting is like a gallery where your art can be stored for others to view.

There are three common types of web hosting: shared, virtual private server and dedicated hosting.

Shared hosting is typically the most basic, and the least expensive, type of hosting. Continuing the art example, shared hosting is like a small gallery presented in a coffee shop. Yes, the art you created is there, but so is art by other people. Shared hosting is similar. You’re usually charged a few bucks a month to house your site, but you don’t get a lot of resources to help you take care of your site. These plans usually cost between $2.50 and $15 a month.

Some other types of hosting include reseller, cloud and WordPress hosting. Reseller hosting involves subscribing to a web hosting service and selling that space to a person who wants to put a website online. Back to the art example: Imagine you don’t own any art, but you see a bunch of people who want to display their art. You have some money so you buy a space in a building for artists to display their work and charge them for using that space. That’s reseller hosting. You buy space on a server, not to use, but to resell to people in order to make money. Cloud hosting is like having copies of your art featured online, instead of just physical locations. That way, even if one gallery is closed your art is still viewable somewhere else. Cloud hosting is similar in that your data is stored in a network of servers so if anything happens to one server, visitors can still view your site like usual. These are generally used by larger businesses and organizations.

Uptime is a measurement of how long your site operates without going offline. The longer your site stays up, the more traffic it can handle and the more money you can potentially make if your site is for a business. Imagine you’ve narrowed down where to hang your art to two places: One is open two days a week and the other is open seven days a week. You want more people to see your art so you go with the place open seven days a week. That’s similar to uptime. However, uptime can be confusing. Generally when you see something is 99% effective, you think that’s pretty good

Unmanaged hosting plans place responsibility for some administrative work on you as the customer. Managed hosting plans, however, leave the heavy lifting to the web hosting service provider. Unmanaged is like if you hang your art in a gallery and you have to clean it, make sure it’s hung right and generally maintain it. Managed is like gallery employees handling those tasks for you. Unmanaged plans are generally more cost effective, but managed plans free up your time to focus on your site

Some of the key security features you should be on the lookout for are secure socket layer certificates, distributed denial of service protections and web application firewalls. 

SSL certificates are a form of cryptographic protocols that encrypt and authenticate data between servers, machines and applications operating within a network. These are like a coded language between the server your site is hosted on and the computer of a visitor. Only your server and your visitor’s computer have the keys to the coded language, ensuring no one intercepts any of your or your visitor’s data.