What is Hosting?

If you have created a web site and you wish other individuals to notice it, you must host your website on a public web server.

Where to host your web site?

Although you can use your own PC as a web server, it is a more common practice to let a hosting service provider take care of your website. The major reason for that is the bigger stability and the uninterrupted accessibility of your web site, because web hosting service providers have top-quality hardware and offer a much greater monthly traffic allowance, which guarantees the quicker access to your site from all over the world.

Hosting services

Select a hosting service, which enables you to register domain names and to create email mailbox accounts. A lot of web hosting providers, like us at CTRsite, offer a cost-free domain name registration as a gift if you sign up for a hosting account.

Hosting your site yourself

Hosting your site on your own server is without a doubt an option, but only if you have time and the necessary know-how. There are some facets that you need to take into account, among them the hardware and software costs. To possess a genuine, professional-looking site, you will need to invest cash in some powerful server hardware, since you cannot bank on a cheap personal computer to carry out the job. You will also require a constant breakneck-speed connection without network downtimes, which typically comes at a pretty steep price. If you are utilizing licensed software for your web site, you will have to pay a license tax too. You may also have to cope with bugs and adware. You will have to maintain your web server running all the time in an environment where "everything could happen". If you do not possess the necessary technical experience, you will need to employ a sysadmin to take care of these things on your behalf, which will render the price of hosting your web site yourself even higher than that of a dedicated web server delivered by a hosting provider.

A dedicated hosting web server supplied by a web hosting provider

Leasing a dedicated web server from a hosting solutions provider is a suitable decision if you would like to create a high resource-demanding web site or a business web page that has very strict safety requirements. The most essential benefits of using a dedicated hosting solution are the high-speed Internet connection, the permanent power supply and the very powerful hardware. Some web hosting vendors, again like us at CTRsite, provide VPS hosting and semi-dedicated web hosting services, which are based on extremely powerful physical servers that can be shared by several customers. You can also expect them to provide efficient load balancing services and the needed backup servers.

Security and stability

Hosting companies are specialized in furnishing web hosting solutions and since this is what they do for a living, you can expect them to offer continuous network connectivity, the latest software patches and the best anti-virus software, as well as sysadmins available 24x7 to assist you in the event of an emergency.

Select your web hosting solutions provider

What you have to consider when choosing your web hosting solutions provider is the dependability of the offered services. Make sure that the web hosting packages provider of your choice provides a 24-7-365 support service. Do not place yourself in a situation where you cannot solve serious problems instantaneously because you must wait until the next business day. Moreover, if you choose a shared hosting plan, which includes a round-the-clock customer service, this suggests that there always will be sysadmins available to fix any serious problems as soon as they turn up, which is a very advantageous thing.

Daily backups

Make certain that your hosting solutions provider offers daily data backups with the offered services, otherwise you may lose some valuable data in case of a hardware crash or because you have erased something by accident. The availability of routine data backups is typically pointed out in the web hosting distributor's Terms & Conditions.

Bandwidth and web server disk drive space

When choosing your hosting plans provider, give particular attention to the bandwidth allowance limits. Make sure that you won't have to overpay for unforeseen high traffic volumes if your website becomes more regularly visited. There are a lot of hosting service providers that offer unmetered web traffic at present, so the best thing to do is make certain that you have taken the correct decision before registering.

Content restrictions

Pay particular attention to the hosting service provider's content limitations. If you plan to post pictures or to broadcast live video or audio content, make sure that you can accomplish that. Moreover, most web hosting suppliers set limitations as far as utilizing their services for file hosting purposes is concerned, so if you upload too much content that is not connected or directly linked to your site, your user account could get suspended. For that reason, reading the web hosting provider's Terms & Conditions, regardless of how time-requiring and boring this might be, is extremely important.

E-mail capabilities

The majority of hosting service providers nowadays also offer electronic mail services with all their website hosting plans. It is not a bad idea to check if the hosting provider of your choice offers such options too, so as to confirm that you'll obtain all the functionalities that you require in exchange for your cash.