Welcome to the next post in the series of Setting up your website series. Its important to own a domain before you can start the process of setting up the "Hosting" for your website. So its a good idea to take a look at my previous post on How to get your domain, if you have not read it yet.
What does hosting mean?
So lets begin. The million dollar question is, What is hosting? Hosting is a space on an actual computer that you rent from a hosting service provider. In simple words, its online real estate (space) to setup your shop (domain) in a building or an office premises (server). Hope this analogy helps :)
Where to buy hosting?
The next valid question is, who sells these server hosting spaces and where to find them? Server spaces could be sold by virtually any large or small service providers in the web space. They could be anybody, an independent website owner, a small or medium web / digital or an IT service company, or large domain registrars like Godaddy, Bigrock, hostgator, etc. Who provides server space is a fairly dynamic question as it keeps changing every minute. A simple google search would yield great results.
What kind of hosting is right for me?
This question is like asking, how much office / shop space do i need for my business? The true answer can come only from YOU! However its important to understand your business needs and learn more about your hosting options available to you.
Things to look for in a server space
- Memory & backup capacity - Auto backups & storing that version of your website. Expressed in GBs
- Storage space - Physical storage capacity of the data
- No. of IPs - Links to physical servers that would be used to direct traffic to your website.
- Security features - SSL certificates, support, licences etc.
There are various types of servers & hosting plans available to business owners and individuals. Some of the prominent ones are as below.
- Shared Web Hosting - Its where your domain is placed in a shared space along with other website. Its like staying as a paying guest :) This option is perfect for websites that are new to the internet, have fewer daily & monthly visitors & have fewer features & tools implemented on their website.
- Reseller Web Hosting - This type of hosting is designed for individuals & companies who plan to resell hosting spaces to others. Since this is a business oriented hosting environment, the "Reseller" also offers additional tools like access to free website templates, free web support to your clients, Private Name Servers, means having an option of asking your clients to point their DNS details to your company servers e.g: nsl.yourwebdesignfirm.com (refer to my previous post for details on DNS)
- Cloud based Web Hosting - Fairly new hosting technology that lets hundreds of individual servers work together so it looks like one big integrated server. This was introduced so that when the hosting company needs more space during high demand, it can simply add more commodity hardware to make an even larger grid. The advantage to website owners is, when they see a sudden surge in traffic, it could be managed by the hosting service provider rather than shutting your website down.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting - VPS servers share one physical server but acts like multiple separate servers, this allows hosting service providers to manage resources effectively & website owners to save costs on buying more hosting space. Each website on a VPS server has their own dedicated resource.
- Dedicated Servers - One physical server is used only for your website. It means all the resources on that servers are used exclusively by your website only.
The hosting service providers offer various packages based on the type of your website and scale & nature of your business. Once you decide on the package & the plan based on the features of the hosting service, its a simple click & follow process, like on an e-commerce website. You will be directed to a confirmation page followed by the payment redirect page. Once the payment is processed, you will get a link from the hosting provider to access the control panel (CPanel)
In our next post we will cover how to work with CPanel and link your hosting with Wordpress CMS.
Hope you enjoyed this post. Leave your doubts in the comments below & fill out the form on the blog if you have any specific concerns.
Happy learning.
Mitul
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