Every website needs a web hosting to be its home. In this lesson, the Best Hosting team will explain to you in detail what web hosting is, its different types, and how hosting works. In addition, we will explain to you how to choose the best web hosting for your project or website easily and at the lowest possible price.
most important technologies invented by humanity.
It is considered one of the main components of the Internet and without it, there would not be this huge number of websites.
Modern technology has affected many areas, even radically affecting daily habits and routines, to the point that it has become the basis upon which many steps are taken, whether on a personal or social level.
One of the most prominent technological means that brought about a radical change was websites, which constituted the most important technological tool in influencing users and became one of the main factors in many commercial projects, life experiences, and social trends.
Since website hosting is one of the most important factors in creating websites, and it is not possible to start launching a website without it, in this lesson of web hosting lessons , we will review with you the most important information about web hosting.
Where we will define what is website hosting, what are the types of web hosting, and what are the steps that must be followed to obtain good website hosting, create your website, launch it to the public, and avoid common website hosting mistakes .
Website Hosting
- What is web hosting?
- Types of Web Hosting
- How to choose a good hosting
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is web hosting?
First, before explaining the idea of what website hosting is, we must first know how the process of transferring and exchanging data and information takes place over the Internet. Which is mostly in the form of a client/server model .
The idea is based on the presence of two computers, one of which is the regular user (Client), which is represented by your personal device or web browser more precisely, and the other is another computer with very large capabilities in terms of processor capacity, storage capacity, security and protection, and other factors, which is called the server or web server .
Through these servers, website files and databases are saved, as well as their contents of texts, images, data, etc.
Since these servers are expensive and cannot be afforded, and the cost of operating them, as well as maintaining them and keeping them, is not affordable for individuals, specialized companies have emerged that work in this field, which are web hosting companies.
These companies purchase, operate and maintain these powerful devices and allow the rental of different spaces on these servers to website owners in order to store website files and publish websites through these servers.
Therefore, website hosting is the process of providing space on the server in order to save and store the website files and display them on it, and maintain the privacy of the data and information on it and allow website visitors to browse it throughout the day without restrictions, and thus the website becomes ready for publication and display to the public.
What are the types of website hosting?
There are many types of website hosting , and the type of hosting depends on many factors, including the size of the site and its files, as well as the number of expected visitors and the importance of the data related to users stored in the site databases. Cost and speed are also factors that are taken into consideration by website owners.
The most common types and services of website hosting are:
- Free hosting : For trial and learning purposes only.
- Shared hosting : for small websites.
- Cloud Hosting : It depends on linking several servers together to benefit from their combined capabilities.
- Virtual Private Servers: These are formed by dividing the private server into several virtual servers using software.
- Dedicated or full servers: This is a complete server device.
- Managed WordPress Hosting: This is for large websites that use WordPress .
As we mentioned, the factors that differentiate between all these types depend primarily on the cost, storage space, and the degree of security and privacy provided by this hosting.
For example, it is not possible to save user data or launch large websites through free website hosting due to its unreliability and the small space it provides.
The same applies to other types of hosting, as the type of site, the type of data that will be stored on it, the expected number of visitors, and other factors that will determine the most appropriate and best site hosting must be determined.
Factors for Choosing a Good Web Host
As we mentioned earlier, there are many factors that must be taken into consideration when choosing a suitable hosting for a website.
Now let us explain the most important factors affecting the choice of hosting and the extent of their impact on the website so that it will be easy for you to choose the best hosting for your website.
In the following points, the Best Hosting team will explain the most important of these factors.
Hosting speed
It is one of the most important factors affecting the users’ experience of your site and one of the important factors that determine the extent of your visitors’ satisfaction with the site. It is very important for your site to load in the shortest possible time in order to maintain customer satisfaction.
Many statistics and studies have proven that if your site takes more than three seconds to load, this will affect the level of visitor satisfaction and increase the likelihood of the visitor leaving the site without completing his browsing and not returning to your site again.
Therefore, the speed factor is one of the most important factors that affect the user experience and maintain the development of the site and the increase in demand for it.
There are many factors that effectively help in increasing the speed of the site and the visitors’ response to it better.
The most prominent of these factors are:
- Use SSD storage disks because they are faster than traditional types, higher quality, and maintain their efficiency over time, unlike traditional types.
- Geographical location : The closer the data center is geographically to the site users, the better.
- Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that hosts some of your site files on devices in different parts of the world, and when a visitor requests one of those files, it is sent to him from the device closest to him.
Bandwidth
It means the amount of data flowing from the website to the visitors’ devices during a specific period and is usually calculated monthly. This factor must be taken into consideration carefully when choosing the appropriate hosting for your website.
Personal websites and small blogs are only visited by hundreds or a few thousand visitors per day at most, and therefore they will not need a large bandwidth capacity, and most hosting offers are suitable for them.
While the major sites that are browsed daily by thousands or hundreds of thousands of visitors, the bandwidth size must be chosen very carefully and the best suitable offers must be chosen because in the event of choosing an inappropriate data transfer capacity, this will cost a lot of money and may require transferring the site to another website hosting company , which may cause technical and promotional problems for the site.
Some hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth, such as the well-known hosting company Bluehost .
The most important factors that help reduce bandwidth and increase site speed:
- Use of content delivery networks.
- Reduce the size of media files, whether images or otherwise, by compressing them.
- Protect your site from DDoS attacks.
File storage capacity
As with bandwidth, the storage space required depends on the size of the site and the amount of media used in it. The larger the media, such as high-quality images ( as is the case in online stores that display high-quality product images to attract attention to the products ), video files, or audio files, the more storage space the site requires and must be taken into account when choosing hosting.
The storage space of a personal website or blog that relies on written texts and a small number of media files cannot be compared with large websites that rely primarily on high-quality media files, as is the case in online stores.
Therefore, the storage capacity factor is an important factor to consider when choosing a website hosting. You can use one of the hosting that does not impose limits on disk capacity usage such as iPage which offers unlimited resources or HostGator which does not impose limits on consumption.
Technical support and after-sales services
It is one of the most important factors when choosing a hosting company to deal with, especially for beginners and those new to technology.
Given its importance, we at Best Hosting mention the quality of the hosting company’s technical support in all the website hosting company reviews we publish.
There must be a capable customer service that is able to help quickly and effectively when needed, and that is able to solve the problems facing its customers in a way that ensures the quality of the site’s work, even if the customer makes a mistake in using one of the hosting technologies.
This is because errors in such cases are very likely, as at this stage customers do not have the sufficient level of experience that enables them to solve the technical problems they face in the best possible way.
Scalability
One of the most important challenges facing new website owners is the inability to accurately determine the website requirements in terms of the required storage space, bandwidth, or other factors that must be accurately determined.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider choosing a web hosting that includes the possibility of developing and upgrading hosting capabilities without entering into technical complications that affect the quality of the site or the need for high financial costs.
The best foreign website hosting companies offer the possibility of upgrading hosting either by adding more resources to the hosting account or upgrading to another larger and more powerful hosting service easily.
Among the most prominent of these companies is InMotion Hosting , which offers a variety of hosting services, and each service has different packages. DreamHost, the emerging hosting company A2 Hosting, and the environmentally friendly hosting company GreenGeeks also do the same.
According to the factors we mentioned, it is clear that the process of choosing a good website hosting is not a complicated process, but it only requires determining the needs as accurately as possible. Also, trying to take these factors into account to obtain effective website hosting that guarantees the quality and efficiency of the site’s work and allows for smooth upgrade without getting into unnecessary complications.