Wednesday, 23 May 2012
 
 
Web Hosting: Defining The Office Space PDF Print E-mail
The web hosting solution for a home-based business will likely be radically different from the needs of a large ecommerce site. The use of a web host is essentially the cyber-office lease for your Internet business. The web hosting solution houses the files you will need to upload and can store you online company data.

There are three primary web-hosting solutions and each one is designed to accommodate a specific need. This article will take a look at these three solutions and what type of business may require each solution.

Co-Located Server Hosting

We will start with the most comprehensive solution first. This type of web hosting is in-house and will typically cost the most. You will need to purchase one or more server specifically for your company use. This server will need to be monitored and will likely require an in-house Internet Technician (IT).

This solution works for larger companies with either lots of data to store or who want to be able to work on any solution regarding their web hosting immediately.

Dedicated Hosting

This plays a similar role to the co-located server hosting option in that you have your own server taking care of your online data. In this case, however, the server is located off-site and is maintained by a third party. Middle to large sized firms would likely use this option to maintain the highest possibility of uptime without the need for an in-house IT.

Shared Hosting

This is the most cost effective method of hosting and takes care of the majority of personal and small businesses sites. Most Shared Hosting options are less than $100 per month (often much less). Many of these same services are adaptable to allow for ecommerce solutions.

There are other options in web hosting solutions, but they typically fall into these three categories. Obviously the Co-Located Server Hosting option will be the most costly and labor-intensive solution, but it will be the best solution for the large business managing hundreds and thousands of transactions online.

The Dedicated Hosting option may be a good fit when a growing company needs a high ceiling for data as well as the comfort of knowing their fate isn’t tied to a server with multiple accounts.

The Shared Hosting solution is perfect for a business startup because it provides a cost effective way to get online without breaking the bank. Some Shared Hosting solutions provide the tools to allow their customers to develop their own ecommerce sites through template rich designs. Remember, just because the server is shared with others doesn’t make it a bad solution. To say otherwise would be to say an office building is bad because it contains more than one office.

 
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A Guide To Virtual Web Hosting
What is virtual web hosting? When you visit a website, what you are looking at on your web browser is simply a web page that has been downloaded from the virtual web server onto your web browser. A website is usually made up of many web pages. These web pages are made up of texts and graphic images. All of these web pages must be stored on the virtual web servers so that users who are online can visit your website.

If you are planning to own a new website, you will need to host it on a virtual web server. When your website gets placed on the virtual web server, then online users can browse your website on the Internet. Companies that provide the web servers that will host your website are called virtual web hosting providers.

A well-established virtual web hosting provider can easily host up to thousands of websites. Therefore, a virtual web hosting company needs many web servers or computers to store the websites. All of these web servers are linked to the Internet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a data center. There must be a guarantee that all of the web servers are safe, secure and are fully operational at all times. Therefore, a data center is a physically secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, redundant power backup, computer data backup, virus detections, and complete disaster recovery capabilities.


There are four main kinds of virtual web hosting companies available each having different characteristics. They can be organized into the following categories:

1. Shared hosting

In this type of virtual hosting, many websites are sharing space on the same web servers. Depending on what kind of virtual web host it is, a physical web server can host up to a thousand different websites at one time. Since the physical web server is shared by many websites, the virtual web hosting provider can afford to offer low hosing prices. Websites on this shared virtual hosting plan would have to be satisfied to accept slower server response time. These plans normally start at $5 - $20 a month.

2. Dedicated hosting

Dedicated virtual web hosting assigns a certain web server to be used by a single customer. Since a dedicated virtual web server is allocated to only one customer, he/she has the option to host either single or multiple websites, handle greater site traffic, modify the software configuration, and scale the bandwidth if necessary. Dedicated virtual hosting is quite a bit more expensive and starts at $50 a month and can easily range from $200 - $500 a month. This is often used by high traffic and very important websites.

3. Co-location hosting

With virtual dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the providers and customers only rent the web server. However, in co-location hosting, the client owns the web server hardware. The customer has full control, therefore, over their web server and benefits from the 24/7 server monitoring and maintenance that is provided by the secure data center. Co-location virtual hosting can range from $500 - $1000 a month depending on the rack space that is required and the monthly bandwidth.

4. Reseller hosting

In virtual reseller hosting, a web hosting provider will offer web server storage to a third party at a discount price. The third party then resells the web server storage to their clients. Resellers are usually web consultants who include web developers, web designers, or a system integration company who resells the web hosting as an add-on service to augment their other range of services.