What is web hosting?
Web Hosting is a service provided by hundreds of companies worldwide in order to “host” and provide websites for anyone on the internet to see. Web Hosting often involves a number of very large computers, called servers, in a secure location, called a data centre which is air conditioned, maintains a high amount of security and has a very fast connection to the internet.
Servers offer a varied amount of services, technologies and protocols for multiple online applications, such as the website itself, email access, mobile access, multiple databases and more.
To have a website online, you must have web hosting. Web hosting provides you with the space you will need to keep the files for your website online, as well as a secure static position where the site resides to.
Free web hosting or paid web hosting?
This question is all down to your budget and your websites needs. If you are thinking of running a blog for yourself, or a small website with perhaps just a couple of pages and images, then free hosting maybe the solutions you’re looking for.
If, however, you are hoping to make more out of your website, then you should look into paid hosting almost certainly.
Free hosting is very limited, often with only 2 or less email accounts available, sometimes no database support and no guarantees of server uptime.
On the other hand, paid web hosting can be cheap whilst still retaining a number of features that free hosting may not offer. Paid hosting comes in a number of different types and packages, and prices, so its important to know what you’re paying for and what you’ll need.
What should I be looking for in a new host?
As explained in some of our other articles, all aspects and features of web hosting is important when choosing your new web host. It is important to make sure that your new host has enough disk space that you will be using on your site, as well as enough bandwidth / disk space to allow for expansion for more visitors to your site.
Also, you must double check that your new web host has all the features that you require. Ask yourself; Do they provide enough email accounts? If you’re using MySQL databases, do they support them? Do they use cPanel? Are they Windows or Unix based, and which is best for you?
There are a lot of potential questions you must ask yourself, whilst bearing in mind other peoples reviews, their reputation, and ultimately – the price.
What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth and Data Transfer is often confused and sometimes called the same thing with a number of web hosting companies, where in fact they are two different things.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can potentially be transferred from one point to another, whereas Data Transfer is the amount of data actually being transferred at any one time.
Because Bandwidth and Data Transfer are often confused, you will sometimes find Bandwidth measured on a data-amount per month basis, such as 10Gb / Month. This means the web hosting company is limiting your account to transferring 10Gb’s of data each month.
There are a multitude of things on a website that can take up Bandwidth or Data Transfer, but the first thing that can be reduced is the amount of images. If there is one large image on your websites homepage which is 500KB and you get 300 different people look at your site in one month, then you will use 1.5GB’s of Data Transfer that month – and this does not include the HTML file which serves the image, along with any other images on the site, perhaps a CSS file, and perhaps other pages or images!
It is important to work out the size of your site and then amount of people you are hoping to get visit it on a per-month basis before deciding on the package you will go for with your new web hosting company.
It is always desired to try and reduce the amount of Bandwidth or Data Transfer a website uses which is sometimes relatively easy to do. It usually involves reducing the amount of images the website uses, or at the very least, optimizing the images to reduce their filesize. Styles embedded directly into the pages on your site can be placed into an external CSS stylesheet to reduce each pages’ filesize even further, and by doing this will also allow easier and quicker updating of styles in the future, as well as quicker page loading times for your visitors.
How to switch to a new web host?
If you already have a website hosted with a company, but you are wishing to change hosting companies, switching to a different web host is often relatively easy and painless, with little downtime on your website.
Firstly, you will need to sign up with your new desired web hosting company and chose the package that most suits your needs. If you are hoping to keep the same domain name, then you will need to get in contact with the registrar that you registered the domain name with.
A registrar is a company that holds the domain name for you, this is often combined with a web hosting company, so you may find that you will have to get in contact with your previous web hosts in order to modify the domain name.
Before you start modifying your domain name, you will, of course, have to upload your website and files to the new web host. This process is often very similar with all web hosting companies, using a protocol known as FTP. Once you’ve uploaded your site to your new hosts, you are ready to point the domain name to them as well.
Once you have access to the settings for your domain name, you will have to modify the DNS records in order for the name to point to your new web hosting company. All web hosting companies should provide you with easy to follow instructions in order for you to do this.
You will then have to wait for the DNS records to populate throughout the internet, which can take anywhere between 30 minutes and 48 hours.
What should I be looking for in a new host?
As explained in some of our other articles, all aspects and features of web hosting is important when choosing your new web host. It is important to make sure that your new host has enough disk space that you will be using on your site, as well as enough bandwidth / disk space to allow for expansion for more visitors to your site.
Also, you must double check that your new web host has all the features that you require. Ask yourself; Do they provide enough email accounts? If you’re using MySQL databases, do they support them? Do they use cPanel? Are they Windows or Unix based, and which is best for you?
There are a lot of potential questions you must ask yourself, whilst bearing in mind other peoples reviews, their reputation, and ultimately – the price.
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