A definition of website hosting

As its name hints, web hosting is a solution, which entails hosting web content. There are various varieties and kinds of web hosting, depending on the purpose and on the objectives. Yet, they all are associated with hosting files, which, once hosted, are made accessible throughout the Internet. A web host is in fact a server that is connected to the Internet and has its own IP address, which enables people to access it via the World Wide Web. The web hosting server's configuration and its limitations depend on the type of web hosting solution it's going to be used for.

What are the different forms of web hosting?

Based on the goal, the web hosting service may be:

File Web Hosting - this form of hosting permits the users to host their files on a given web hosting server. With the standard file hosting solution, the files that are kept may only be accessed by the individual that's utilizing the service. This hosting solution usually concerns backups of personal computers , docs, personal files and even other web servers. This service may also involve certain limits when it comes to the server storage and the root privileges. There may also be web traffic quota limitations, but that is dependent on the particular service provider.

Warez Web Hosting - the so-called warez hosting solution is quite similar to the previous hosting service type. In spite of that, in contrast with the file web hosting solution, the warez hosting solution is utilized for transmitting patented work without the sanction of the copyright bearer. In brief - it refers to the prohibited transmission of files and documents. There are lots of approaches for this to be realized, but the 2 chief ways are - via simple HTTP downloading and via peer-to-peer connections. The first approach entails either a particular web portal, or, most commonly, simply a directory on a web server that's been made available for everyone to access it and thus download proprietary documents free of charge. The second method involves a P2P connection, using the so-called Torrent web servers, through which people transmit files between each other. There are just a few web hosting vendors that allow such type of web hosting on their web servers, mainly due to all the judicial predicaments that it involves. Usually such web sites are hosted on personal dedicated servers that are registered by 3rd party companies either in the Middle East or in Asia.

Electronic Mail Web Hosting - this service is relevant with both shared web hosting and dedicated hosting servers, based on the client's intention. If you want to launch your very own personal SMTP server, then you will require either a virtual hosting server or a dedicated web hosting server that offers the level of access required to execute such an assignment. For ordinary email hosting purposes, though, you can create a normal shared site hosting account, to which you can point the mail exchanger records of your domain name. This is not a solution that's widely popular, because the web page hosting and the e-mail hosting services are being served by 2 different web servers, often belonging to different companies.

Website Hosting - the most widespread and broadly used hosting service at the moment. It's used for hosting website files, whose sort depends on the Operating System the hosting server is availing of - Linux or Windows. Different types of files necessitate concrete hosting server Operating Systems, otherwise they won't be displayed accurately on the Web. This form of hosting may include data space and bandwidth quota limits, root-level access and central processing unit usage limitations.

Depending on the goals and on the objectives, the user should choose the sort of hosting server that he requires for his project, and, of course, the webspace hosting provider that's going to supply it. There are several kinds of servers, based on the specs and the web space hosting services that they provide. These are:

Shared Website Hosting Server - a shared web server supplies a smaller amount of system resources, which, of course, is reflected on the cost of the service. It can be utilized for hosting small and middle sized sites, which do not require vast quotas of disk space and web traffic.

Semi-Dedicated Hosting - they perform on the very same principle as the shared webspace hosting servers. Yet, there are much less customers hosted on the same web server. Hence, each of them will enjoy a bigger quota of the web hosting server's resources like RAM, storage space, bandwidth and CPU. Excellent for hosting big websites that do not demand root privileges.

VPS hosting - the VPS web hosting servers are ideal for middle scale sites, which do need root access to the web hosting server's configuration files. Generally, there are a handful of private virtual server web hosting accounts located on the same server. Still, each of them is autonomous from the other ones and has its own Operating System.

Dedicated Server - a fully dedicated physical machine set up and accessed by you and solely you. It ensures a great amount of system resources. It also offers full server root privileges, which makes it a perfect platform for any sort of online portal that requires a web site hosting service.

The sole question that remains is:

Which web site hosting firm should I opt for?

As mentioned above, there are very few providers offering warez web hosting services because of legal predicaments. Such web hosts are being shut down virtually every month. For that reason, if you wish to launch such a service, you should do it on your very own personal computer. The shared hosting service is the most famous kind of hosting service. That is why, each hosting distributor offers it. Not all of them, though, offer services such as VPS web servers, semi-dedicated web servers and dedicated servers. Most of the small scale webspace hosting companies do not have the resources needed for maintaining those solutions. That's why it's invariably best to choose a larger hosting company that can furnish its clients with all the solutions that they want. You can quickly identify such web hosting companies by the sorts of services that they are making available and by the way that they present them to the clients. For instance, some web hosting providers permit you to kick off with a small scale site hosting account and then shift to a more advanced one, if you consider it necessary to do so. This is extremely suitable, because you do not have to migrate sites between servers and there is no possibility of facing outages because of all the predicaments that may take place. Web hosting companies such as JoshWho Hosting are offering all types of solutions and have the adequate web hosting server resources and staff to assure that their customers will not encounter any problems when changing services, which is what a top hosting vendor is in fact all about.