What is Hosting?

If you have developed a site and you would like other persons to observe it, you must copy your web site to a publicly accessible server.

Where to host your website?

Although you can use your own PC as a web server, it is a more conventional practice to let a hosting provider host your website. The prime reason for that is the greater stability and the uninterrupted accessibility of your site, because web hosting providers have special hardware and apportion a much higher monthly bandwidth usage allowance, which guarantees the faster access to your web site from all around the globe.

Hosting solutions

Choose a hosting solution, which allows you to register domain names and to create e-mail box accounts. Lots of web hosting firms, like us at Horjar Technologies, offer a charge-free domain name registration as a gift if you sign up for a web hosting account.

Hosting your website on your own

Hosting your website on your own personal web server is doubtlessly an option, but only if you have time and the necessary know-how. There are some facets that you have to take into consideration, among them the hardware and software costs. To create a "real", professional-looking site, you will need to buy some powerful server hardware, because you cannot expect a cheap PC to perform the job. You will also require a constant high-speed connection without network downtimes, which generally is offered at a pretty high price. If you are making use of licensed software for your web site, you will need to pay a license fee as well. You may also have to cope with bugs and Trojans. You will need to keep your server running all the time in an environment where "everything could take place". If you do not have the needed technical know-how, you will have to hire a system administrator to tackle these issues for you, which will render the price of hosting your site on your own even steeper than that of a dedicated server delivered by a web hosting supplier.

A dedicated web hosting server furnished by a hosting supplier

Renting a hosting server from a web hosting company is an excellent option if you want to launch a heavy resource-requiring site or a business web page that has very precise security requirements. The most significant upsides of utilizing a dedicated web hosting server are the high-speed Internet connection, the permanent power supply and the extremely powerful hardware. Some web hosting firms, again like us at Horjar Technologies, supply VPS hosting and semi-dedicated server web hosting services, which are based on very powerful web servers that can be divided among several customers. You can also anticipate them to provide effective server load balancing solutions and the required backup servers.

Safety and reliability

Web hosting vendors are specialized in supplying web hosting solutions and because this is what they do for a living, you can anticipate them to offer constant service uptime, the newest software patches and the best anti-virus software, as well as system administrators available 24x7 to support you in emergency cases.

Choose your web hosting services provider

What you have to consider when choosing your web hosting solutions provider is the stability of the offered services. Make sure that the web hosting accounts provider of your choice provides a 24x7 customer service. Do not put yourself in a situation where you cannot resolve urgent problems straight away because you must wait until the next business day. Moreover, if you pick a shared website hosting plan, which features a 24-hour customer support service, this implies that there always will be system administrators available to solve any serious problems as soon as they show up, which is a very good thing.

Daily data backups

Make sure that your web hosting packages provider offers routine data backups with the offered hosting services, otherwise you may lose some precious data in the event of a hardware crash or because you have deleted something unwittingly. The presence of everyday data backups is usually mentioned in the web hosting company's Terms of Use.

Bandwidth and server hard drive space

When choosing your web hosting plans provider, give specific attention to the bandwidth usage quota limitations. Make certain that you won't have to pay a fortune for unpredicted high bandwidth volumes if your website becomes more popular. There are lots of hosting distributors that offer unmetered web traffic at present, so the wisest step to take is to ensure that you have taken the most appropriate decision prior to subscribing.

Content restrictions

Pay special attention to the web hosting distributor's content limitations. If you intend to publish images or to broadcast live video or audio, make certain that you can accomplish that. Besides, most hosting vendors put limitations as far as using their services for file storage purposes is concerned, so if you upload too many files that are not connected or directly linked to your web site, your website hosting account could get cancelled. For this reason, reading the web hosting supplier's Terms of Use, no matter how time-absorbing and boring this might be, is very essential.

E-mail capabilities

Most hosting providers nowadays also offer electronic mail services with all their website hosting offers. It is not a bad idea to check if the web hosting company of your choice offers such options as well, so as to be sure that you'll avail of all the functionalities that you need in return for your money.