explain the hosting

The Internet offers opportunities for those motivated enough to start a business of their own or "try" something different, and the possibilities are almost endless. Have you ever dreamed of running your own website, your own piece of the "dot com" pie? Everything starts with a great idea, but for a successful website up and running it takes a little effort. Anyone can create a site will generate revenues over time, energy, and the few dollars a month it takes to host it. And, like creating a brick and mortar business, creating a web site can be provided in the expression of personal development and providing the world with service as income on life. So, to do business online you need a website. Why? There are several answers to this question. Some of the most important reasons for establishing an Internet presence are: 1. Greater credibility. It's a proven fact that a professional, well-designed site has a good impact on customer confidence in your company. It shows that you are an update and you care about your customers by offering a convenient way to contact you and know your products and services. Using the Internet to find services and products is much easier and faster than trying to hand with the Yellow Pages. 2. A 24 / 7 International presence. Your website is available to potential customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With a website, you open up a world of possibilities to reach people who might not otherwise find you. When your office is closed you can be sure your site is open to showcase your products and services and answer questions from your customers. 3. A powerful sales tool. Your customers will be able to reach your services and products in their own time. You can save on printing costs for brochures, coupons, flyers, newsletters and more. Of course, a website does not preclude traditional forms of marketing, but complete. But if you're here, chances are that you already have a website or intend to have one, so let's move on to the next step of hosting a website. Hosting a website A website is essentially a set of files linked together by a navigation system. More complex sites have buttons, forms and extended features with a database to store e-mails, applications, products features, etc. but ultimately they come down to the same thing: a collection of files. Thus, the hosting of a website is making these files available to Internet users. To make the site available to users of the Internet you need: A computer connected to the Internet where files are stored; A software called Web server (eg Apache Web Server) that will "serve" files to visitors; One way to make visitors find your site. Why do not you use your own computer to host your website? It has an Internet connection and Apache Server should not be so difficult to install. Well, this is not so simple. There are some technical aspects to consider. Hosting a website involves the following: Being online. If you shut down your computer, your Web server will also be closed, making the site inaccessible. If your computer hardware or software fails and you need to change a component or restart, the time until it is back count as downtime for your site. Having a dedicated IP address. If you are behind a router then you probably do not have a "real" IP address so you need to forward traffic. In addition, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may change the IP address of your computer from time to time. More information about this in the next article: Choosing a domain name. Resources. Hosting the site on a home server uses some hardware resources (disk space, memory, CPU) and a portion of the total bandwidth that you pay. The need for additional software. If a simple site requires only a web server running more complex sites require additional software installed. For example, if you need a database, you must install a SQL server (MySQL, Oracle, etc.), if you need the functionality and processing forms, you need PHP, Perl, ASPX or other software installed. But for those who want to try hosting a website on the house / computer desk, we have a section called the shelter to explain the basics. For the last step (a way to make visitors find your site), you will need a domain name Tips for getting a domain name The visitors find your site by its domain name. The domain has two parts: the name + extension (. Com,. Org,. Co.uk, etc..) A domain name that is useful and easy to remember is a great asset. With almost all the "good" domain name taken nowadays it is difficult to find a good name. As the title of this article suggests, the site name should be the domain of the site. When people think of your website, they think of him by his name. If your site name is your domain, they will automatically know where to go. What happens if your site is called "HostingProfs, but your domain name because it is www.myhosting.com? Your customers, recalling that they have visited a site called HostingProfs will www.hostingprofs.com type in the address bar of their browser and they will find another site and you lose a sale. There are a few tips to consider when choosing a website name (also known as the site address, URL or domain name): Try to get a name that relates to your company, your products or services. For example, try to find a domain name that includes your company name or name of your product, because it's the first thing people will try in their browsers. It is also good practice when it comes to optimizing search engines (SEO). Having a keyword or significant people in your website name will help your website rank higher in search results for this keyword; If you can not get the domain you want, consider other forms of the name you typed. Www.hosting.com For example, consider www.besthosting.com, www.myhosting.com, www.webhosting.com, www.thehosting.com and so on. But be careful here, as some forms of alternative could drive visitors. For example, if you consider appointing www.cheaphosting.com the site, some people might associate the site with only cheap and perhaps unprofessional hosting offer. Very often, you find the field. Com taken, but the. Net,. Org and country specific domain extension free. The. Com is the most popular and most used domain extension so it is best to get a domain name. Com. But if you can not get the domain name. Com that you want, then you might consider further extensions. It is preferable to have such a sense and easy to remember. Net domain that a dark domain. COM unrelated to your company, or it is not easy to remember. Country specific domains (such as. Co.au,. Us) are also popular in each country. If you do business in the United States, obtaining one. We will create a local brand and attract more U.S. visitors, but in the meantime, could restrict the flow of customers from other countries. The only returning for a domain name ending with other extensions is that people are so used with Web sites ending in. Com that you might lose some visitors to your comrade. " Com website. If you found this domain name. Com you are looking for, consider buying multiple domain names for the same site. The idea is to protect yourself against the competition. So if you have a site on the optimization of search engines (SEO) called www.bestseo.com you are interested in obtaining www.best-seo.com, www.bestseo.us, www.bestseo.net and perhaps other similar URLs containing the keywords you want. This way you can prevent other sites from popping near your name. The idea is to get even with "shells URLs" for your site. What is a typo URL? Here is a simple example: what do you think is the fault of the strike more common for www.google.com? You're right! It www.gooogle.com. www.gooogle.com Try to type and see where you're going. Some SEO experts say that this is not good but it is acceptable to have several domains for your website as long as you redirect your site using the redirect code 301. The conclusion is that you need for your domain name before anything else! Even before starting work on the site itself. To register your domain, you must do so with a ICANN accredited registrar. There are many registrars domain, some more expensive than others, our recommendation is ICANN accredited Registrar GoDaddy. Registering a domain name. Com for 1 year is less than $ 10 and can be done in 2 minutes. So what you waiting for? Get the domain before someone else registers it! :) If you need help registering a domain name, you can find more information in our little tutorial for registering a domain name with GoDaddy.com. The domain name - Web hosting relationship So what has the domain name to do with hosting a website? Well, there is a close relationship between your domain name and your host (the computer where you host the website). The domain is in fact a "label" that will redirect visitors to the IP address of the computer where the site is hosted, so these two work in pairs. We use this system because it is easier to remember a name rather than IP address is a group of 4 numbers, each number between 0 and 255 (eg, 67.72.123.201). The domain pair - IP address is then recorded by a DNS (Domain Name Server). But although they are related, the website / domain name and hosting server are two different things, so do not confuse the domain name of a website with the hosting of this website . Here is an analogy with real life to better understand the concept. Say you want to call your friends, the Smiths, inviting them to dinner. You ask your wife to do as you're a little busy right now. She does not know the number by heart so it will look for the number in the phone and call. This example reproduces almost the domain names and how hosting works. The Smiths are the equivalent of the domain name. You do not ask your wife to dial a number, you just said call the Smiths. Of course, the Smiths have a phone number associated with their name, that's how you can reach them by phone. The telephone number is equivalent to the IP address of the computer on which the site is hosted. The role of the telephone book is also an important issue. It helps you to find the matching name - phone number. The role is played by Directory DNS servers. They constitute a network of "directory" know that any domain name association - the IP address, so when you write an address in your browser, you get the content of the site that is associated with that name and not the content of a another site (or empty of contents). To change your accommodation, you simply redirect the domain name to another IP and change the DNS servers for your domain. Of course, you also need to actually move the files to the new hosting server. It's like the Smiths to get a new phone number. The name remains the same, but they can be reached by calling a different number. Some hosting companies offer free domain name if you purchase a hosting package from them. Although this is a bonus of Nice must be careful to accept. Make sure your domain name is registered in your name with your up-to-contact information. Let your hosting company register the domain name can cause headaches when you decide to change your host. From our experience, we have not had such problems with the recommended packages, but if you want to be "safe", save the domain name to an accredited ICANN registrar. If you've ever bought anything online or fill out a form on a website, you have all the skills you need. In conclusion when you buy a domain name, you are actually purchasing the right to redirect the URL to a web server of your choice, where your site is hosted. You can even buy a domain name without hosting yet, you can add / modify the IP and NS (Name Servers) values later, after the site is ready and all files are moved to the server of accommodation. Therefore the first thing to do is to buy the domain name! Web Hosts As explained above, the accommodation includes a computer in a manner similar to the one you have at home, connected to the Internet, where the files of your website live. This way, people who surf the Internet can access your Web site. So, if we give a definition for a web hosting company, it will: = A Web Host service provider with a computer or network of computers connected to the Internet where you can place your website. A web host rents its space mainly computers and connecting to you, so you can make your website available on the Internet. Web hosts are responsible for maintaining the server (and website) online, and also maintain and improve it. Web Hosts usually have only one computer or a dozen, they have hundreds of them. A network of Web home computer in a specific location is called a data center. Data centers have fast Internet connections, monitoring 24 / 7 secure access, UPS and battery backup in case of power failures, temperature and humidity and so on, providing an optimal environment for hardware systems located within the facility. Depending on your budget and your needs, you can rent to host a web server in full, you can share the rent on a server with others or you can even buy the server and only pay for the connection and maintenance. So when we talk about hosting, we speak of three types of hosting: dedicated hosting, shared hosting and collocated hosting. Dedicated Hosting. You have a dedicated server where you can store your website (s). You have remote access to the computer and you can install and update on this matter any software you want or need. This type of accommodation is suitable for large sites with lots of traffic (and revenues), because the costs are slightly higher than, for example, shared hosting. Shared Hosting. This means that your website resides on a server along side with other sites. The total space on the hard disk of the computer is divided into smaller amounts and you get this amount of disk space. So, for your web site a fixed amount of disk space and data transfer (bandwidth) will be allocated. Your site will also share the computer's hardware and software resources (memory, CPU, server database, etc.), but rest assured, your information will remain confidential. No user / website can access files of another user / site residing on the same server. This type of accommodation is the cheapest of the three types presented, but it's good enough for almost 95% of people looking for a host. Collocated hosting. It is similar to dedicated hosting with the difference that you actually own the server, therefore, next to software upgrades, you can buy hardware upgrades as well (more memory, larger hard drives, etc..) The advantage is that the server is in a protected environment, with best matches for the Internet, rather than remain in an office or home. So what web hosting plan is the right plan for me? We will discuss this in the following section: Determining your needs. You will learn to "analyze" offers accommodations, how to compare and choose what is best for you. Until then, there are a few basic common features that all web hosting plans have. Here are some concepts that are important for you to understand Hosting Windows or Linux? Or in other words, the server that hosts the operating system. As you know, and if you do not, you just found, next to Microsoft Windows, there are other operating systems like Mac OS, Linux, Sun Solaris, etc. The most popular choices for hosting servers are: Linux / Unix with Apache as a Web server and Windows and IIS (Internet Information Server). Some say that Linux is the server of choice because of greater stability and security, others say that Windows is catching up on Linux. We are not here to take a Linux-Windows battle. When you choose a type of server you have to consider programming languages to be used by you or your team of programmers to build the site. Both servers work described with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, which are programming languages based on any website. ASPX, MSSQL is a language and the server database used in Windows environments, while PHP and MySQL are mainly used on servers hosting on Linux. Conclusion: choose your server type based on programming languages used to build your website. The price / space / bandwidth Trio Price, disk space and bandwidth are the most important features of a hosting package. Therefore, all "short versions" of the offer of accommodation you can find the will advertise this trio: the price per month / storage space / bandwidth. Disk space. Disk space, as discussed above, is your allotted amount of space on the hosting server. In case of shared hosting, you have a set amount in case of collocation or dedicated you are limited by the size of your hard drives installed. Web pages are generally very small, so you can store a multitude of web pages in a small amount of disk space. Do not worry about space unless you have an e-commerce site with a large database of products and images or if your site offers files for downloads or allows users to transfer files . In this case, we must plan ahead to accommodate these files, so you need to look for hosting packages with appropriate disk space. Disk space in bytes is calculated as the disk space on your home computer. 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1,000 megabytes (MB) = 1,000,000 kilobytes (KB). For example, this site occupies 7-8 MB of disk space. A Web page with graphics medium has averaged 70-80 KB. Bandwidth. When people visit your website, they are actually downloading Web pages and images via their web browser on their computers. When you copy or update files on your web account, you upload data to the server. Bandwidth measures of all this activity: download and upload. Thus, the bandwidth is somehow related to disk space, because it measures the number of bytes transferred by a visitor when accessing files on the site. A site that has many pages and images "consumes" more bandwidth for the same number of visitors (assuming that visitors can browse through more than the first page) of a website that has fewer pages or pages are mostly text. Thus, the rule here is "more is better". Bandwidth is usually charged on a monthly basis and is calculated in MB or GB There are web hosts that offer unlimited bandwidth. The bandwidth and disk space costs money, so it is not possible or at least not economically feasible to offer them one or two in unlimited quantity. So why are there offers with unlimited bandwidth? The host relies on traffic statistics, approximately 90% of websites can not use much bandwidth (less than 2-3 GB per month), average bandwidth "weak" sites compensates a little " high "bandwidth websites. We are not saying to avoid hosting plans that offer unlimited bandwidth, maybe the hosting company offers good service, but be sure to read the agreements or conditions of service, as there will probably a note on what it really means unlimited bandwidth. More on this in section Overselling Web Hosting. Say you have a website with 10 pages, each page of calibrating average 80 KB. With 500 stream unique visitors per day traveling on all pages of your site, you'll use 80 x 10 x 500 x 30 = 12,000,000 KB (12 GB) of bandwidth per month. It is difficult to estimate use of bandwidth for a future site, because it depends so much and how fast it gets successful, how many pages are accessible if visitors are unique (if sometimes the images are extracted from the browser cache, so they do not need to be downloaded each time). It is preferable to seek an offer with an amount of bandwidth that a "buffer" to accommodate future growth of the site. So in this article we have tried to explain the most common features of an offer of accommodation: the disk space and bandwidth. In the following section: Determining your needs we will explore more features to try and choose a good offer of accommodation that best suits your needs.