Whether you are planning to host a new website or would like to move your existing website to a new hosting service, it’s time to venture in to the world of web hosting.

Website hosts and how they work can be confusing to people, especially if you do not have a lot of technical knowledge. At the same time, it is very important to understand how hosts work and how different hosts vary in order to get the best deal and avoid common and costly mistakes.

On this site you will get a proverbial crash course in web hosting. We will explain the different types of web hosting deals that are available and how they work and in what situation each type of web host is best for you. You will find time and money saving tips and suggestions on how to insure that your web hosting experience goes smoothly.

If you are building a new website from scratch and don’t know how, we will also cover how to get started on web design, whether to design your site yourself, or hire a professional designer, the ins and outs of working with a designer and how to negotiate a contract that is satisfactory to both of you.

What is Web Hosting?

At a basic level, a web hosting service is space on a special type of server that is capable of making your web site’s files available on the World Wide Web. Web Hosts are companies that own and manage these servers and are responsible for ensuring they are kept running smoothly and that hardware and software is upgraded and up-to-date.

In a perfect world, you would get just that – cheap, reliable web space on servers that are perfectly maintained and up-to-date. But in reality there are wide degrees of quality and service between hosts. There are also different types of hosts to consider for different situations.

Different Types of Web Hosting

Web hosting is not simply a matter of buying web space and away you go, there are a multitude of packages offered by web hosts, selecting the one based on your needs should be your first goal.

Essentially when you are selecting a web host there are four fundamental options:

• Free hosting – there are many services around that will host your site for nothing, usually you are required to display advertising on your site. This option is great for personal web pages, but limiting for businesses.
• Self hosting – a web server can be run on a personal computer using your Internet Service Provider’s bandwidth. This option is ok for small websites and has the advantage that you don’t need to run ads on your site. You must manage and maintain your own server which will require a degree of technical skill and it is important to check your ISP’s terms and conditions before self-hosting as some ISP’s frown on this practice or ban it outright!
• Shared hosting – this is the most common web hosting option. With shared hosting, your website resources are maintained on a host’s web server that is shared with other customers. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU.
• Dedicated – this option is the most expensive, but provides the most optimal web solution in terms of bandwidth and resources. Unlike shared hosting your website is hosted on it’s own dedicated server. The option is ideal for large websites that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors daily.

Whatever your unique needs are there is a web hosting solution just for you. Read on to discover how to get the right web hosting plan for your own unique situation that is the most reliable and cost-effective.