Part 5: The Perfect Host.

There is a glib, but often-repeated phrase that will be familiar to anyone who has any interest in Internet marketing: “All you need to get started is a domain name and some hosting.”

Those of us who take these things for granted often make the basic mistake of forgetting that that phrase might as well be written in ancient Egyptian for all the sense it makes to many people.

Hopefully the video (and text) in session 3 of this course explained about domain names and how to go about getting one, but what about hosting?

What is hosting?

Let’s start at the very beginning and explain what hosting is.

‘Hosting’ refers to a place where you can store all the files that make up your website, and where people who wish to view it can safely be allowed to enter.

In theory, you *could* store all the files that make up your website on your own home computer, but there a few difficulties with that solution:

1. In order for people to be able to access your site, your computer would have to be on, and connected to the Internet, 24/7.

2. If your site became popular your Internet Service Provider would not appreciate the traffic flowing through their service. Your use of bandwidth (see below) would be inevitably high and would soon exceed what they would allow.

3. There would be security issues: visitors would be wandering around inside your personal computer.

4. If everyone served websites from their own home computers the Internet would become even more chaotic than it already is!

5. The Internet would have to know where to find your computer if someone wanted to get to your website.

All told, while possible, it isn’t a good idea.

So early on in the days of the Internet, a system was devised that made Internet sites be stored on special computers called servers. A server is a very simple computer that is ‘on’ the Internet 24/7 by very fast connections. And the location of these servers is logged – so when you type a URL into a browser, it can find the server where the website is.

In the early days, servers were expensive – at least they were too expensive for the average person building a website to need to buy. So an industry grew up whereby someone who did own a server would rent space on it for other people to use.

In other words, they ‘hosted’ your site on their server, for a monthly fee.

What kinds of hosting are there?

Every hosting company offers a wide range of services, and reading their websites can be very confusing. For our purposes though, hosting options boil down to three main types:

- Shared hosting
- Reseller hosting
- Dedicated Server

In reverse order, with dedicated server hosting you will be given a server all to yourself. Nobody else’s websites will be hosted on it. It is effectively your own private server that the hosting company maintains for you. Naturally this is an expensive option with typical monthly fees in the $170-$200 range.

You would only need dedicated hosting if you have a really big and important website, so for most of our needs it is not something to consider – yet!

Reseller hosting came about because a lot of people wanted to be able to offer hosting services themselves, but didn’t want to go the the trouble or expense of setting up a hosting company.

The hosting company rents you space on their servers in the normal way, but you can then subdivide ‘your’ space up and offer portions of it to other people – and charge them a monthly fee.

While many people don’t really want to sell hosting plans, the other big benefit of reseller hosting is that by becoming your own client, you can can host many of your own domains in the one hosting account – all accessible through a main control panel.

Costs of reseller accounts vary wildly, but two I use are fairly typical: one costs $24.95 per month and the other $34.95.

Shared hosting is the cheapest option and for beginners, the best.

For a few dollars a month (currently $4.95 with www.urlnex.us/hostgator/) you can host one domain on a server that may be filled with hundreds or even thousands of other people’s websites.

More recently, hosting companies have realized that many people own multiple domains, but have no interest or need to sell hosting themselves. For these people, the reseller account plans are overkill.

To that end, companies like Hostgator now offer shared hosting plans that allow you to host multiple domains on a single account, and these can offer incredible value.

Hostgator’s ‘Baby’ plan (go to http://www.urlnex.us/hostgator/ then click on ‘Learn more…’ in the Shared Hosting panel) is exceptional value at just $7.95 per month. You can host unlimited domains up to the very generous hosting space and bandwidth limits (see below) and the added functions and facilities are top class.

What is all this web space and bandwidth jargon?

They are only shorthand for very simple concepts.

Web hosting space (sometimes called file space) is simply the amount of hard disk space that the hosting company is renting you. If the hosting space limit is 600gb (as with Hostgator’s Baby plan) that means you can store files up to that limit. ‘Files’ means everything that you put on the server – the files that make up your website, all the images, and video you store there and so on.

If you have a hosting plan that allows unlimited domains, that 600gb has to be divided between them. While you can host as many domains as you like, they can’t, combined, exceed the web space allowance.

Bandwidth is sometimes trickier to understand, but stick with me – it is quite simple once you get the idea.

If you have a web page that is made up of files that total 25kb and 1000 people come to view it, then 25kb x 1000 (25000kb) of data has been moved. Your bandwidth allowance denotes the total amount of data that you can move in a month. As you can imagine, video, audio, and some pictures can eat up your bandwidth allowance very quickly, so before you buy hosting it is a good idea to check how much you will be allocated.

That’s it for today’s session – I hope that hosting is no longer a great mystery for you and now, when someone says ‘All you need is a domain name and hosting’ the phrase will make sense!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

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