Web Server And Web Hosting Services - An Overview

Web hosting providers provide the following basic services for web servers - anything else can be considered add-on features in theory, although in practice they are rather essential to run a successful Internet business or business website. A web hosting provider should provide the following as part of the functionality of the web server:

1. Hard Disk Space.
This is what you are actually renting, for all practical purposes. You need hard disk space on a web server to host your website. A website really consists of a lot of files, much like MSWord documents, or Excel spreadsheets. These files take up hard disk space. The web hosting provider provides you with space so that people around the world who has access to the Internet can access those files on that web server.

The price or hard disks have come down dramatically over the past year or so and it is not unknown for a hosting provider to make provision for packages from 250Megabytes up to 2000 Megabytes and even more.

How much would you need? The average web site that just makes use of static HTML pages need about 5 MB to 10 MB of space. If you use a dynamic website where some of your data is stored in a MySQL database the database will also take up space. These types of sites require more space and anything between 100MB and 250MB should be enough.

If you are going to store emails on your server you need to add these into your calculations. Emails can take up a lot of web space very quickly if people send you large files. You will need to monitor the space taken up by Emails very carefully since I've seen individual mailboxes go up to 50 or 60 MBs very quickly.

If you want to host video or audio files on your server, you will have to make provision for quite a lot more disk space. One audio file can easily take up 30 to 40MB.

2. Bandwidth
Bandwidth depends on your traffic. Every visitor to your website will consume bandwidth since this is what they will use when they open any pages on your site. Once again, if you have video and audio files on your site you will require more bandwidth. A good rule of thumb is to have an allocation of about 100KB (Kilobytes) for every visitor. This means that 500 visitors per month will consume about 50MB of bandwidth - although this is only true for an average site with mostly text and a few pictures. If you have large picture galleries, audio and/or video files you should rather work on 150KB per visitor or even more. Search engine spiders also consume bandwidth! You should monitor your bandwidth usage through your CPanel control panel or your website statistics and make sure that you communicate early enough with your hosting provider in case you need to purchase more bandwidth to prevent penalties and/or lockouts.

3. Access to your site
Under this can be counted access to a control panel, such as CPanel, Plesk or Helm, that will help you with setting up of emails, sub-domains, software installations and your MySQL database if you are running dynamic functionality such as shopping carts, forums, Content Management Systems etc.

You are also going to need FTP access to upload files to your web server. Without being able to use FTP you will not be able to maintain the content on your site (unless you make use of a Content Management System). FTP access is still required even in that case since you will definitely have occasion to have to upload files such as pictures, audio, video and other files to your server.

These are the very basic functionality that a web hosting provider should provide!

Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4You Web Design and Web Development Services and Internet Web Hosting for South Africa. Visit our site for free Joomla tutorials and tips on how to get the best performance out of your website

Should You Invest In Dedicated Server?

There are millions of websites out there, and most of these websites are hosted on shared servers. The owners of these websites know that they are to getting too much traffic, so it's smarter to outsource their hosting and have them hosted on someone else's server. Outsourced hosting costs $10-$100 a month, and it is a great solution for webmasters who are just starting out, and have a small site or sites. But what about dedicated server? At what point does it become worthwhile to use one? Dedicated server is, simply put, a server that is owned by someone else, but you have exclusive use of it.

Dedicated server may cost $500-$1000 a month to use. You can alternatively buy your own server for a one time cost, but this requires having a technical person who will be able to address any problems, so if you don't have a technician at hand, dedicated server is your best option. What will you gain from using a dedicated hosing server?

1. A more reliable host - you don't share your bandwidth with outer webmasters, as you do in the shared hosting situation. This promises a more reliable connection that will not be interfered with what other webmasters are doing.

2. Faster load time - you're not sharing resources with other sites, so your site will upload much faster

3. You can consolidate all your websites into one server - this will lower the over all costs, if you have more than one website.

4. Better security - your own dedicated server is much more private that shared servers, where others can prey into your business. This in itself is a prime motive for many businesses to use dedicated hosting.

To conclude, dedicated hosting is recommended if you take your website seriously and conduct some real activity on the web. This can be even more true if you conduct any kind of ecommerce or password based activity, that require greater security. Just make sure you use a professional company that will take good care of your website.

Want to learn more about dedicated servers? Visit Alex Dale's dedicated-servers-solutions.info. We talk more about dedicated hosting and dedicated hosting plans.

Dedicated Servers: A Summary

What is dedicated hosting?
This is a server which is owned by the hosting company which they will
rent out to you for a monthly fee along with an allotment of bandwidth
which you can use with it. This means that you get a whole server to
yourself to use for what you desire, this is needed for scripts which
use a lot of server resources (for example large message boards, for
one of which I pay for a dedicated server). As a customer, you would
have full control over the server and could change the configuration as
required, a facility not available when you have to share a server with
others. With a dedicated server, the web hosting company is responsible
for the hardware as they own it, not the customer.

What are the advantages of it?
You can do anything you like on it that you like (although most hosts
have acceptable use policies which state that illegal content is not
allowed, and in some cases they prohibit connecting to IRC). This means
that you can login to the server, set up programs as you desire, then
run them without having to worry about the effects on server resources
for other people. You can run games servers (for games such as
Half-Life, etc), IRC servers or bots, or just run a web server which
uses a lot of resources (and with a special setup which isn't found in
shared hosting).

What are the disadvantages?
The main disadvantage is the cost, which will put many people off
getting one. The cheapest seem to come at about $50/month, and the most
expensive cost thousands of dollars each month. The price can be
reflective of the quality (such as the cost of running - or your host
renting a space in - the datacentre, the hardware in the server, the
technical support provided by your host and so on), alternatively it
can just be an over inflated price for what is a poor quality product.
It's important to compare the prices and packages offered from several
companies before coming to a decision, also you should ask your friends
if they have any opinions on the matter, and research information about
the hosting companies and datacentres - are the constantly offline due
to DDOS attacks? do they have a poor record of customer service?

Another disadvantage is the added responsibility involved in keeping
the software on your server secure, for example you may have to update
builds of apache, control panel software, etc as security holes are
found.

Is it for me?
That depends, if you want to a game server then you'll need one - but
it may be easier for you to buy one from a dedicated games server
comapny, they know their stuff and would probably be able to install
and configure the servers for you. However they would place
restrictions on what you could do with the server and maybe the setup.
If you want to run a small IRC server, bot or bouncer then you would
probably be easiest paying a smaller fee to hire one of those from an
IRC or shell provider company, also you don't have to worry about
restrictive datacentre AUPs which prohibit IRC use.
If you are starting a small web forum or site then you probably won't
need one initially, wait until it grows and you can determine if you
need the server to ensure further growth is ok.
Otherwise you could possibly look into getting one, you could even
email hosting providers asking what package they think your site would
require (although take their replies with a pinch of salt, they could
try to sell you stuff you don't actually need).
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