Internet Website Hosting – How Does It Work?

An internet website hosting service is provided by a website hosting company to enable an individual or business to make their website or blog available to the world on the internet.

The hosting provider will have a data centre (or share someone else’s) where the servers are located in a secure and controlled environment (air conditioning etc.) with contingencies in place to cover possible failures.  Users can access these servers over the internet using FTP to load and maintain their sites.  This frees users from any concerns about the hardware or internet connectivity.

Home website hosting is possible, where an individual runs a site on a PC at home, but this would be done as a hobby, rather than as a serious alternative to a hosting service. It is time consuming, unlikely to save money and will provide an inferior service.

Large corporates may have the infrastructure to host their own web servers and it may make sense for them to do so, but for everyone else it is best to use an internet website hosting service.

As user requirements vary there are a variety of hosting options:

Shared Hosting: This is the basic service where multiple customers share the resources of the same server.  For most users this is all that is required.  The only point to bear in mind is that hosting services vary in how many accounts will be hosted together and this can impact the performance of a site.  Check independent user feedback before signing up.

Virtual Private Server Hosting: This is where servers are divided (by software) into “mini servers” which behave like a physical server with the user having guaranteed resources.

Dedicated Server Hosting: Here users really do get their own server for their private use.   The user can often choose whether to be responsible for managing the server or not.

Cloud Hosting: Now offered by some hosting services based on clustered load-balanced servers.  There is no single point of failure and cost is based on the resources required.

eCommerce Web Hosting: This allows integrating of shopping cart and payment processing functions into a site.  Sometimes it is an option within the standard hosting plans.

There is often a choice between Linux and Windows hosting services (not connected with your PC operating system) although some services are Linux only.  It is generally best to go for Linux unless you have a particular reason to go for Windows (e.g. your site has been developed to run in a Windows environment).

It is easy for someone to become a hosting “reseller”. This is where the services of a large hosting provider are resold under a third party brand with that third party being responsible for ongoing support. The latter is important and independent user feedback should be sought before signing with a reseller.