003 – Everything You Need to Know About Website Hosting

What is Hosting?
Hosting is like renting an office. You can do it yourself out of your garage, or you can pay for better facilities with all the essential plumbing and security features. For an office this would mean renting at a business centre. For your website this means paying for space on a highly specialized computer server within a dedicated hosting facility.

Types of Hosting
The high configuration computers that host your files are called web servers. In hosting facilities, these are connected to high-speed fiber optics with near 100% uptime. From your home or garage you may get a lower quality of connection than that typically available from companies dedicated to hosting.

Shared Hosting (Virtual Hosting): As high configuration servers are expensive to set up, it is common to share their space across many websites. Each website has their own web address and domain name. This economical solution suits businesses and individuals desiring an online presence with minimal involvement and budget.

Dedicated Hosting: This is required for large sites or applications, which run within a dedicated space. Sites that need a higher level of security due to the nature of the information being accessed or supplied can take the extra step of having their site hosted on a Virtual Dedicated or Private Server (VPS) with additional security features.

Co-location Hosting: If you have your own server, ready with the applications, and just require continuous electrical supply and high-speed internet connection, you can locate it with some ISP’s or professional web hosting companies which have the facilities.

Features of Great Hosting
– Customer Service
– Disk Space
– Bandwidth
– Uptime
– Programming Services
– Backups
– Domain Names and Other Services
– Price

Hosting I use:
– After taking all of these points in mind, I have found a host that meets all of my expectations
– GreenGeeks.com
– They have great prices ($7.95 per month if you purchase one year at time)
– Unlimited domains and databases
– And they are a neat company in that they are 300% green
– We’re the World’s #1 Green hosting provider. The energy used to power our servers and offices is replaced 3 times, making us carbon-reducing. When you host your site with us, your helping the environment at the same time.

Sign up today: go to YourWebsiteEngineer.com/hosting.

Call to Action:
It’s time now for the call to action. This week the challenge is to sign up for hosting for your business from Green Geeks or another hosting company you see fit. Also a reminder, if you haven’t signed up for my monthly newsletter, please do so. You will receive a copy of the best top 10 plugins for anyone with a WordPress website! You can find the sign up and more over at www.YourWebsiteEngineer.com