A definition of web hosting

As its name denotes, web hosting is a service, which involves hosting online content. There are different forms and kinds of hosting, based on the mission and on the usage. Nonetheless, they all pertain to hosting files, which, once hosted, are made available throughout the World Wide Web. A web host is in fact a server that is connected to the Web and has its own personal IP address, which enables users to access it through the World Wide Web. The server's configuration and its limitations are determined by the form of web hosting service it's going to be utilized for.

What are the various types of web hosting?

Based on the usage, the web hosting service may be:

File Storage Web Hosting - this type of hosting allows the customers to lodge their files on a given web server. With the common file storage web hosting solution, the files that are deposited may only be accessed by the user that's availing of the service. This web hosting service typically appertains to backups of PCs , documents, personal files and even other web servers. This solution may also include certain limitations with regard to the disk space and the root privileges. There may also be traffic restrictions, but that is dependent on the given web host.

Warez Hosting - the so-called warez hosting service is very similar to the previous web hosting service type. Nonetheless, unlike the file hosting solution, the warez web hosting service is utilized for disseminating licensed content without the sanction of the patent proprietor. In brief - it is associated with the unauthorized propagation of files and materials. There are lots of approaches for this to be attained, but the two essential ways are - via plain Hypertext Transfer Protocol downloading and through P2P connections. The first way involves either a certain web portal, or, most often, simply a directory on a server that's been made available for everybody to access it and thus download proprietary documents for free. The second approach entails a peer-to-peer connection, utilizing the so-called Torrent web servers, via which people exchange files between each other. There are a few webspace hosting companies that permit such form of hosting on their web hosting servers, chiefly due to all the legal entanglements that it entails. Commonly such web pages are hosted on private dedicated hosting servers that are registered by 3rd party firms either in the Middle East or in Asia.

Email Web Hosting - this service is relevant with both shared web hosting and dedicated hosting servers, depending on the client's intention. If you would like to launch your very own private SMTP server, then you will need either a private virtual web server or a dedicated web hosting server that provides the level of access needed to accomplish such an assignment. For regular e-mail hosting ends, though, you can create a conventional shared web space hosting account, to which you can point the mail exchanger records of your domain name. This is not a service that's widely famous, since the web site hosting and the email hosting services are being served by two different web servers, usually owned by separate hosts.

Website Hosting - the most widespread and vastly used hosting service today. It's used for hosting website files, whose type is determined by the OS the server is availing of - Linux or Windows. Different types of files necessitate concrete hosting server OSs, or else they won't be shown appropriately on the Web. This form of web hosting may have disk storage space and bandwidth quota limits, server root access and central processing unit usage restrictions.

Depending on the goals and on the objectives, the user should pick the sort of web server that he needs for his work, and, of course, the webspace hosting corporation that's going to supply it. There are different sorts of web hosting servers, based on the specifications and the web space hosting services that they offer. These are:

Shared Hosting Server - a shared web site hosting server provides a smaller amount of resources, which, of course, is manifested in the price of the service. It can be utilized for hosting small scale and middle scale online portals, which do not demand big quotas of server storage and web traffic.

Semi-Dedicated Hosting - they are based on the very same principle as the shared site hosting servers. Nevertheless, there are much fewer users sharing the same server. Because of that, each of them will enjoy a larger share of the web hosting server's resources like RAM, data space, traffic and CPU. Excellent for hosting popular web sites that do not demand full root access.

Virtual Private Server - the virtual hosting servers are excellent for middle size online portals, which do need root-level access to the web server's config files. Commonly, there are a few Virtual Private Server web hosting accounts sharing the same machine. In spite of that, each of them is isolated from the rest and has its own Operating System.

Dedicated Server - a fully dedicated machine set up and accessed by you and only you. It ensures a great quantity of resources. It also includes full root access, which makes it a perfect solution for any sort of web site that necessitates a website hosting solution.

The sole question that's left is:

Which web site hosting firm should I select?

As mentioned, there are just a few hosting providers offering warez web hosting services due to judicial problems. Such providers are being shut down almost every month. Because of that, if you want to provide such a service, you should do it on your own personal computer. The shared site hosting service is the most widespread kind of web hosting service. Hence, every site hosting company offers it. Not all of them, however, offer solutions such as VPS hosting servers, semi-dedicated web hosting servers and dedicated servers. Most of the small scale webspace hosting corporations do not have the means needed for offering those solutions. Because of that it's invariably best to choose a bigger company that can supply its customers with all the solutions that they are searching for. You can effortlessly identify such companies by the types of services that they are offering and by the manner in which they introduce them to the clientele. For instance, certain hosting providers allow you to kick off with a smaller hosting account and subsequently move to a more advanced one, if you consider it compulsory to do so. This is quite convenient, because you do not need to transmit web pages between web hosting servers and there is no possibility of facing outages due to all the predicaments that may crop up. Web hosting companies such as BLUE RIBBON HOSTING are offering all types of solutions and have the adequate web server resources and staff to guarantee that their customers will not come across any predicaments when swapping services, which is what a top hosting vendor is in fact all about.