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This article including following topics:
What's web hosting
Web hosts are companies that provide high speed permanent Internet connection and harddisk space on a (or some) computer(s) they own for use by their clients, typically in a data center. Web hosts will provide technician support (ususally 24x7) and maintenance to make sure the computers are accessable by people from Internet for all the time (hopefully). Thoses computers are called as servers.
Servers are powerful computers that have extremely large hard drives, or an array of hard drives. They connect to Internet backbone through extremely high speed broad band connections.
For end users, buy space from web hosting compies will make the users solely foucs on the web content other than hardware and network technical support.
And the cost of buying such spaces is much lower than hire a group of full-time technician to do daily maintenance and support.
End users can upload their web contents and files to the hosts' server via FTP or Web interface. Very easy to use.
Types of web hosting
Here's some common types of web hosting, including Free web hosting service, Shared web hosting service, Virtual Private Server (VPS), Dedicated hosting service, Co-location web hosting service, Cloud hosting, Clustered hosting, etc.
Free web hosting service
Free web hosting is offered with small or limited harddisk space and network bandwidth, many of these services are advertisement supported. Free web hosting will provide you a subdomain name. If you'd like to use your own domain name, then you have to register one seperately at first. Usually the hosting company does not provide technicial support for free hosting users/clients.
Shared web hosting service
This is the most common hosting service, esp. for personal and small business. It means end user's web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds. So, all websites may share the same physical server and the space on it.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Web hosting company can host multiple "Virtual" servers on one physical computer (server), each virtual server is isolated from others, and their access to the hardware is managed by the a managing software (like Citrix). VPS is a good choice which is in the middle of Shared web hosting and Dedicated hosting service.
Dedicated hosting service
The end user rent a dedicated server from the web hosts, gets full control over its OS and webserver.
Co-location web hosting service
The end user owns a computer (server), the hosting company provides physical space and network connection for the end user. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the co-location provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
Also, there are other types of hosting available which providing higher availability and higher performance such as Cloud hosting, Clustered hosting, etc, and the cost is much higher.
Best web hosting service providers
My list of best web hosting service providers is available from here
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Web Hosting
