A definition of website hosting

As its name indicates, web hosting is a solution, which involves hosting online content. There are various forms and types of hosting, based on the purpose and on the objectives. However, they all involve hosting files, which, once hosted, are made accessible through the Internet. A web host is in fact a hosting server that is linked to the World Wide Web and has its own IP address, which allows people to access it through the Internet. The hosting server's configuration and its system resources are determined by the type of web hosting service it's going to be utilized for.

What are the various forms of hosting?

Based on the application, the hosting service may be:

File Web Hosting - this type of hosting allows the customers to host their files on a particular hosting server. With the classic file web hosting solution, the files that are hosted may only be accessed by the user that's availing of the service. This web hosting solution normally pertains to backups of personal computers , docs, private files and even other hosting servers. This service may also involve given restrictions in relation to the server storage and the root access. There may also be web traffic restrictions, but that is dependent on the actual hosting provider.

Warez Web Hosting - the so-called warez hosting service is resembling the previous web hosting service type. However, in contrast with the file storage hosting solution, the warez web hosting service is used for transmitting copyrighted materials without the permission of the license proprietor. To put it briefly - it is associated with the forbidden propagation of files and materials. There are numerous ways for this to be achieved, but the two main approaches are - through plain HTTP downloading and via peer-to-peer connections. The first one entails either some web page, or, most commonly, just a directory on a hosting server that's been made available for everyone to access it and thus download proprietary documents for free. The second approach involves a P2P connection, using the so-called Torrent web servers, via which users transfer files between each other. There aren't many website hosting firms that allow such type of hosting on their web servers, mainly owing to all the judicial complications that it presupposes. Commonly such websites are hosted on personal dedicated web servers that are registered by 3rd party firms either in the Middle East or in Asia.

Email Hosting - this service is applicable with both shared website hosting and dedicated web hosting servers, depending on the client's desire. If you wish to set up your own personal SMTP e-mail server, then you will need either a private virtual web server or a dedicated server that provides the level of access needed to complete such a task. For ordinary electronic mail hosting purposes, though, you can utilize a regular shared web site hosting account, to which you can point the MX records of your domain name. This is not a solution that's very famous, since the website hosting and the electronic mail hosting services are being served by two different web servers, usually belonging to different hosts.

Web Site Hosting - the most famous and immensely used hosting service at present. It's utilized for hosting site files, whose sort is determined by the OS the web hosting server is running - Linux or Windows. Different sorts of files request specific web server OSs, otherwise they won't be shown accurately on the World Wide Web. This type of hosting may contain web storage and traffic quota limitations, root access and CPU usage restrictions.

Depending on the mission and on the objectives, the client should pick the kind of server that he requires for his work, and, of course, the web space hosting firm that's going to provide it. There are different kinds of hosting servers, based on the configuration and the web site hosting services that they provide. These are:

Shared Hosting Server - a shared webspace hosting server includes a smaller amount of resources, which, of course, reflects on the price of the service. It can be utilized for hosting small scale and medium web pages, which do not require immense amounts of web space and bandwidth.

Semi-Dedicated Servers Hosting - they work on the very same principle as the shared web page hosting servers. In spite of that, there are much fewer users sharing the same hosting server. Hence, each of them will obtain a bigger quota of the hosting server's resources like RAM, server space, bandwidth and CPU. Excellent for hosting heavy online portals that do not need server root access.

VPS - the private virtual servers are excellent for medium size sites, which do demand root access to the hosting server's configuration files. Typically, there are a handful of virtual private web server hosting accounts hosted on the same physical machine. Yet, each of them is autonomous from the rest and has its own Operating System.

Dedicated Servers Hosting - a completely dedicated machine set up and accessed by you and solely you. It ensures a tremendous quantity of system resources. It also gives complete root-level access, which makes it an excellent environment for any type of website that demands a web hosting solution.

The sole question that's left is:

Which hosting distributor should I pick?

As mentioned, there aren't many hosting companies offering warez web hosting services because of judicial complications. Such web hosting companies are being closed down almost every month. For that reason, if you wish to provide such a service, you should do it on your own computer. The shared web site hosting solution is the most popular kind of web hosting service. So, each and every site hosting company offers it. Not all of them, though, provide services such as VPS servers, semi-dedicated web servers and dedicated servers. Most of the small sized hosting corporations do not have the resources needed for maintaining those solutions. That is the reason why it's invariably best to opt for a larger hosting company that can supply its clients with all the solutions that they necessitate. You can quickly identify such web hosts by the kinds of services that they are supplying and by the manner in which they introduce them to the clientele. For example, certain hosting providers permit you to start with a low-end web hosting account and then shift to a more advanced one, if you consider it necessary to do so. This is quite convenient, because you do not need to migrate web pages between hosting servers and there is no danger of facing network outages because of all the complications that may appear. Web hosting companies such as webmailserver provide all sorts of services and possess the adequate server resources and personnel to guarantee that their clients will not suffer any complications when swapping services, which is what a top hosting provider is actually all about.