Glossary

Web Hosting Services

Web hosting services cover the requirements of making a website accessible on the world wide web. The most basic of these is the upload and storage of all the pages that make up your website on a server connected to the Internet.

Beyond this exist comprehensive web hosting packages that provide database support and application development platforms for special features and functionalities such as discussion forums, content management systems, eCommerce, video hosting and blog hosting.

One of the most important characteristics to look for in a web hosting provider is reliability and uptime. Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment.

There are six main types of hosting service:

  1. Free: often advertisement-supported and very limited in terms of storage space and bandwidth.
  2. Shared: many websites are placed on the same server, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands.
  3. Dedicated: each user gets his or her own web server and gains full control over it
  4. Managed Dedicated: the user gets his or her own Web server but the provider controls and maintains it to guarantee quality of service
  5. Colocation: similar to dedicated, except the user owns the server. The provider offers little to no support to the client, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server.
  6. Clustered: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization.
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