What is web hosting anyway? What do I get when I buy a web hosting solution?

To get things straight from the start, let’s just tell you how it all works.

Web hosting made easy

Websites basically consist of text and images. In general , the information contained in these files is charlotte seo service referred to as content. The appearance of the website is referred to as design.

In order to be accessible to online users, all these files must be stored on a web server. You can think of web servers as computers that store files from dozens or hundreds of websites. These computers are all connected to the Internet via a high-speed connection. When you access a web page, your browser connects to the web server that stores that page and downloads it to your computer.

So, a web server is a must if you want to share your website content with online users over the internet. There are thousands of web servers in the world and there are companies that own them. Such a company is called a web hosting provider.

A web hosting provider can have dozens of web servers hosting thousands of websites. The web server computers are usually found in large numbers and are all housed in special buildings or parts of buildings called data centers. In addition to the high-speed Internet connection, these locations are set up to ensure optimal operating conditions and security for the web servers. HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning) control, fire protection, virus protection, data backup, power supply, even autonomy in the event of a disaster. Another term for the web servers in the data center is a web farm.

In order to run your website properly, you need a storage space on the web server to store your data and an internet connection to it. The amount of data available to you on a web server is simply referred to as storage space and is usually expressed in MB. The internet connection required to bring your website online is called bandwidth and is also measured in MB or even GB.

Having looked at the basics, it must be said that different web hosting providers offer different storage space and bandwidth. Disk space and bandwidth are usually the main features of a web hosting plan.

The terminology associated with web hosting can be quite confusing: virtual web hosting, dedicated hosting; Co-location hosting, shared hosting, reseller hosting.

Shared web hosting

Shared web hosting or virtual web hosting are two terms for the same thing. Shared web hosting means that many websites are hosted on a web server, each with a defined quota of disk space and bandwidth. They all run at the same time and there can be hundreds to thousands of websites on the same web server. Should you be concerned about exceeding the web server’s performance given the high number of websites, the problem is better known as slow server response, which means your visitors are having to wait too long for your web pages to load .

With reputable web hosting providers, this is usually not a real problem, since the operating parameters of the web servers are monitored and appropriate measures are taken to maintain the contracted level of service.

The more websites share the resources of a web server (hard disk space, bandwidth, main seo charlotte memory, CPU time) , the cheaper the web hosting provider can offer its services. A minus would be that even with a high level of service, if you choose shared web hosting, you will have to accept a slower response time of the server.