Web Hosting Advice

>> The four main types of affordable web hosting

Shared Hosting

This is a paid for web hosting service where many websites reside on one server which is connected to the Internet.

Each site has its own slice of the server to keep it separate from other sites. This is generally the most economical way of paying for hosting, and it provides you access to a multitude of other services, such as receiving and sending of email, software installation, databases, e-commerce solutions and hopefully quality technical support.

Free Hosting

Free Hosting as the name suggests is free, meaning that you will not pay a monthly or annual subscription fee for it. However, nothing in life is truly free, and Free Hosting services will require you to allow the hosting company to provide adverts on your website. This is how they generate their revenue.

They will often allow you to select the type of adverts that are run on your site but this will always limit the freedom you have to present your website the way you want to.

In addition, the resilience of the servers and software used to support them is not always good. There can be limitations relating to software support, database functionality and more importantly technical support. Free web hosting companies will usually provide a subdomain (yoursite.freewebhost.com) or a directory (www.freewebhost.com/~yourname) as your web address, which in most cases looks unprofessional from a business point of view.

Free Hosting is only recommended for small personal sites that do not have a lot of traffic and definitely not for someone serious about promoting their business on the web.

Virtual Private/Dedicated Servers or VPS/VDS

Recent advancements in both hardware and software technology, particularly in the areas of virtualization, enable one physical server computer to be partitioned into multiple virtual servers.

Each virtual server has the appearance and capabilities of running as a dedicated machine, can run its own operating system, be independently rebooted and run its own combination of software. VPS or VDS hosting has many great advantages for customers requiring more advanced requirements, but without the cost of a fully dedicated server solution.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated Hosting offers, as the name suggests, one server dedicated solely to your web site. You do not have to share any server resources, processing power, RAM, or hard drive space, with any other website.

This form of hosting is recommended for sites with high amounts of traffic and especially if you need increased reliability, speed, security or if you need to run non standard software.

Dedicated hosting is the most expensive and can often require high degrees of technical knowledge.

>> What is the definition of Web Site Hosting?

Definitions offered on websites like whatis.com or Wikipedia tend to be written like a dictionary entry.

“Hosting (also known as Web site hosting, Web hosting, and Webhosting) is the business of housing, serving, and maintaining files for one or more web sites.”

Not a lot of help to be honest.

Let's try a different way.

‘If you create a website and want it to be seen by visitors on the web, you have to upload it to a server. A server is a powerful computer, that is connected to the Internet 24/7 365 days a year. You either buy or rent a section of the server to store your web pages. The business that supplies the server for you to use, is your web host. It is the web hosts job to make your web pages available to anyone who looks for your web site address via a search engine, or URL, using a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox."

>> Web Hosting Handbooks

Below are some PDF Handbooks which can help you with managing your own domain and hosting account. They also aid you with setting up the different features that come with the hosting plan. Please note that these are our older PDF Handbooks, these are currently being updated and will be available shortly. The information contained withn them is still relevant though.

	Setting up your email: This manual will talk you through how to set up email on your home computer. Click here to download the manual (file size: 1MB)
	MySQL, Webmail, and Stats This manual will show you some of the additional features you have in your cpanel. Click here to download the manual (file size: 1.4MB)
	Compila Online Account This manual will help you learn how to use your online account panel with Compila. Click here to download the manual (file size: 1.9MB)
	Uploading your Web Files This manual will help you upload and download files to and from your Web space. Click here to download the manual (file size: 1.2MB)
	Entire Manual This download is for our entire Hosting handbook, including all the above. Click here to download the manual (file size: 5.6MB)