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HomeHosting ArticlesHow Shared Web Hosting Works

How Shared Web Hosting Works

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Shared web hosting is a service that web hosting firms offer so that you can upload your site to the World Wide Web.

How can people notice your site?

When you set up a site and you would like other persons to check it out, you will have to copy (or upload) it to a web hosting server. If you try to render the website accessible on the web by shared web hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it constantly up and running, which is why website hosting services came into being.

How does shared web hosting work?

Web hosting providers provide you with hard disk space for your web site on their powerful computers (servers) and ensure constant service uptime. When somebody writes your web address (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the hosting server where they can have a glance at the content of your site.

Web hosting types

With the advance of online technologies, different types of web hosting services have appeared to match the various requirements of web site possessors, including shared website hosting services, virtual server web hosting services and dedicated web hosting services.

Shared web hosting

Shared web hosting is the most common type of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where a single web hosting server is divided among multiple shared web hosting account holders who are restricted by the CPU, traffic and server disk space quotas that they have been allotted. This type of website hosting is generally less expensive - you don't have to pay for the entire hosting server upfront, as it is shared among numerous hosting clients, and the web hosting provider can afford to offer much cheaper prices. It is also much easier to use - the hosting server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the web hosting vendor takes care of all server maintenance tasks and security updates for you.

The disadvantage of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the server's system resources with other hosting account owners and if one site becomes very busy it may affect (and slow down) all the other web sites on that web hosting server, but the majority of web hosting vendors, including us at Eagleprohost.com, have security systems in place that hinder that from taking place.

A definition of a hosting service

Because shared hosting is the most common type of web hosting, most web hosts and web hosting users simply call it hosting or website hosting. As there is a huge competition on the website hosting marketplace, most web hosting providers try to offer cheap prices and bonuses with their services. We, for instance, provide different web hosting plans and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, based on your finances. If you select the yearly billing cycle, you will receive a bonus - one cost-free domain registration.

VPS web hosting

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated hosting solution. If your site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared hosting plan, a VPS server hosting package is a possible option. private virtual server web hosting customers still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other virtual web server hosting account holders, but the physical server is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated web server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a VPS web hosting server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization software gives you much more autonomy to configure your virtual web server, but it also calls for a higher degree of technical expertise.

Dedicated Server Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Server Web Hosting solution, the customer obtains an entire web server and can use all its system resources. The dedicated web server hosting solution is the most flexible of all web hosting solutions and offers many customization options - the dedicated web hosting users can choose the hardware and software specs that will meet their needs. Dedicated resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated server web hosting plan is a perfect solution for a popular corporate web portal, for instance - you will not share the dedicated server's resources with anyone else and will have complete root-level access. You will exercise complete control over the physical machine, which will enable you to implement any server configuration changes that you might require. The disadvantage of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical expertise is needed - unless you hire an IT expert, you will be responsible for administering and configuring the dedicated web hosting server. The dedicated web server hosting solution also costs much more, since the cost of the dedicated web server isn't shared among any other users.

A website hosting tip for beginners

If you are just beginning to develop your website and are seeking a website hosting solution to start out with, the shared website hosting solution persists to be the smartest option. If your site outgrows your website hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not involve migration of your web site files, because only the features of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting plan to a more powerful one at any given time without worrying about the number of days left until the expiration date. Also, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared hosting plan and still require more resources (which is great sometimes - it indicates that your web site's popularity has increased!), there always is the option to switch to a VPS web hosting solution or a dedicated web server hosting platform without needing to switch hosting providers.

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