How Shared Hosting Operates

Shared hosting is a service that hosting companies provide so that you can publish your web site online.

How can people check out your site?

When you develop a web site and you would like other people to observe it, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a hosting server. If you attempt to make the site accessible on the Internet by shared hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it always online, which is why website hosting services came into being.

How does shared hosting work?

Hosting providers provide you with disk drive storage space for your website on their high-powered computers (servers) and ensure uninterrupted Internet connectivity. When somebody types your web site address (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the server where they can have a look at the content of your site.

Types of hosting

With the growth of online technologies, several types of web hosting services have appeared to meet the different expectations of web site possessors, among them shared web hosting services, VPS web hosting services and dedicated server hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared hosting is the most common type of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where a single server is divided among lots of shared web hosting account owners who are limited by the CPU, bandwidth and web hosting server disk space quotas that they have been allocated. This type of hosting is generally cheaper - you don't have to buy the entire server in advance, since it is shared among lots of hosting customers, and the hosting services provider can afford to offer much more reasonable prices. It is also much easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the hosting company takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates on your behalf.

The downside of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's system resources with other web hosting users and if one website becomes really popular it may affect (and slow down) all the other sites on that web server, but most hosting distributors, including us at SupremePlan.com, have protection platforms at work that obstruct that from happening.

A definition of a hosting service

Since shared hosting is the most commonly used form of web hosting, most hosting firms and web hosting users simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is an immense rivalry on the web hosting marketplace, the majority of hosting providers try to offer modest prices and bonuses with their services. We, for example, provide different website hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and annual, depending on your resources. If you pick the annual billing cycle, you will get a gift - one free-of-charge domain name registration.

VPS hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your web site outgrows the resources offered by your shared hosting account, a virtual web server package is a good solution. VPS web hosting customers still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS hosting clients, but the physical server is partitioned using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own dedicated resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a virtual web hosting server are not shared. In addition, the virtualization technology offers you much more autonomy to configure your virtual web server, but it also calls for a more advanced degree of technical proficiency.

Dedicated Server

With the Dedicated Server solution, the user gets a whole web hosting server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most reliable of all website hosting solutions and offers a multitude of configuration possibilities - the dedicated server hosting users can pick the hardware and software specs that will meet their demands. Dedicated system resources and no-holds-barred performance are two reasons why a dedicated hosting web server is an excellent choice for a resource-intensive corporate website, for example - you will not share the physical server's system resources with anyone else and will be bestowed with full root privileges. You will exercise full authority over the web hosting server, which will permit you to make any server configuration modifications that you might need. The setback of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical proficiency is needed - unless you hire an Information Technology professional, it will be your duty to administer and configure the dedicated web hosting server. The dedicated web server hosting solution also costs far more, because the cost of the dedicated web server isn't shared between any other users.

A hosting tip for beginner users

If you are just beginning to develop your site and are looking for a web hosting solution to commence with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most intelligent option. If your website outgrows your shared web hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your data, because only the parameters of your web hosting account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting plan to a more powerful one at any given time without having to worry about the time remaining before the expiration date. Additionally, if you eventually reach the most advanced shared hosting plan and still require more system resources (which is great sometimes - it implies that your site's popularity has risen!), there always is the possibility to move to a virtual private hosting server or a dedicated hosting solution without the need to swap hosting providers.