Web Hosting Articles

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What is a web server?

A web server is a number of large computers, known as servers, housed in an air-conditioned server house known as a data centre where they are connected to a highly efficient, fault-tolerance high-speed internet connection.

Web servers are able to handle hundreds of thousands of requests a second and can return back this information quickly, providing the visitor of a website with the information they were looking for in no time at all.

It is big business to keep servers online – this is called uptime and it is the measurement of how long as server is online and functional for during the period of a month, or year. A lot of hosting companies boast their servers have 99.9% uptime, which means 99.9% of the time (per month) their servers are online and functional, meaning all websites hosted on their servers will be working.

There are many different types of web server available, such as dedicated servers, load balancing servers, database servers and many more. If you’re just starting out on the web and need the basic type of web server, look out for fully managed shared hosting, which means the hosting company maintains the server you’re on, along with the other people that share it. Its often the cheapest solution if you’re a beginner.

Free web hosting or paid web hosting?

This question is all down to your budget and your websites needs. If you are thinking of running a blog for yourself, or a small website with perhaps just a couple of pages and images, then free hosting maybe the solutions you’re looking for.

If, however, you are hoping to make more out of your website, then you should look into paid hosting almost certainly.

Free hosting is very limited, often with only 2 or less email accounts available, sometimes no database support and no guarantees of server uptime.

On the other hand, paid web hosting can be cheap whilst still retaining a number of features that free hosting may not offer. Paid hosting comes in a number of different types and packages, and prices, so its important to know what you’re paying for and what you’ll need.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 10:11 am and is filed under Chosing your hosting, Getting setup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Can I have email address with my web hosting provider?

As said in a number of our other articles, almost all web hosting companies provide with at least a few email addresses which can be setup. This means that, for example, you owned the domain example.com, then you could have the email address john@example.com making your online presence much more professional.

If you like the sound of this concept, then it is important to think about how many email accounts you will need and want to have setup.

As well as email accounts, you can also setup an email forwarder which will forward emails sent from one address to another. Email forwarding is probably best explained with an example, so again, you own the domain example.com and you have an account setup called john@example.com, just as before. A forwarder with the address info@example.com will mean that any emails sent to info@example.com will now be forwarded onto john’s inbox, whereas the info@example.com address does not have an inbox as such.

What is cPanel?

cPanel is a web-based program or application that is used to control the settings of your website and can be accessed via It is widely used throughout most web hosts and is almost always installed for you as part of your new account signup.

cPanel has an easy to use icon-based interface where you are able to add, edit and remove email accounts (depending on the limitations of your hosting package), setup email forwarders and auto-replies, modify files directly, manage your databases, setup CRONs and much more.

The features on cpPanel are usually limited by the package you have opted for and the limitations of the web host you chose. You will usually find that web hosts will limit the amount of email addresses you are able to have setup, for example, and this number if reflected in the cPanel of your site.

What is disk space?

Disk space is the amount of physical space you are allocated when choosing a new web host. Disk space is exactly the same as the space you have available on your home computer – it is measured in the same units (GB & MB) and means the same thing.

Websites themselves often don’t take up much space, but this depends on what the website offers. When choosing a new web host, you will have to take the amount of disk space they offer into consideration and make sure it is enough for your needs.

Bare in mind that the disk space web hosting companies offer often also include the amount of space you are allowed on your email accounts. If you’re planning on having a lot of email accounts set-up for a lot of different people, then this may begin to take up a lot of space depending on the email services that you decide to use.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Getting setup, Managing your website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Can I design my website online?

Designing your own website, from scratch, is usually not an online-based process. It is best if you design and develop your site locally (on your home computer) before putting it online.

If this is possible, then designing, developing and constructing the site will be much faster since you will not have to upload the files that make your site each time you make a change.

If you are hoping to do this, then you should look into installing Apache on your home computer if you are using Unix-based web hosting.

What is Fantastico?

Fantastico is a feature package usually added on to a control panel such as cPanel which includes a number of scripts and online applications for you to get on with your website quicker than ever.

If you web hosting package supports Fantastico, then you can effectively have your website up and running literally within a few clicks.

Fantastico includes a lot of different software for a lot of different types of site, including web content management systems, shopping cart software, blogs, photo sharing sites and Wikis, and more.

What is CSS?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and is a standardized styling format for websites and HTML. It is recommended that websites always use an external style sheet based in CSS in order for the site to render the correct styles on it.

If, for example, you developed a 10 page site in HTML code without an external CSS file, then decided to change your navigation slightly to a different colour or position, then you’d have to change every page on your site which could take a long time.

CSS avoids this since all the styles of the site are held in one single external file. ////..........................................pradip......................................