A definition of hosting

As its name suggests, web hosting is a solution, which involves hosting online content. There are various forms and kinds of web hosting, depending on the purpose and on the usage. Nevertheless, they all entail hosting files, which, once hosted, are made accessible through the World Wide Web. A host is actually a web hosting service that is connected to the Internet and has its own Internet Protocol address, which enables people to have access to it via the Web. The server's configuration and its resources depend on the type of web hosting solution it will be used for.

What are the different types of hosting?

Depending on the function, the professional web hosting solution may be:

File Hosting - this type of web hosting enables the customers to store their files on a particular web server. With the traditional file storage web hosting solution, the files that are deposited may only be accessed by the person that's availing of the service. This web hosting service usually applies to backups of PCs , docs, private files and even other hosting servers. This service may also impose certain limits in relation to the web space and the root privileges. There may also be traffic quota limitations, but that is dependent on the actual provider.

Warez Hosting - the so-called warez web hosting service is resembling the previous web hosting service type. In spite of that, unlike the file storage web hosting solution, the warez web hosting service is utilized for disseminating licensed content without the sanction of the license keeper. To cut a long story short - it is associated with the prohibited circulation of files and documents. There are a lot of ways for this to be carried out, but the two main methods are - via plain HTTP downloading and through P2P connections. The first one entails either a particular website, or, most commonly, just a directory on a web hosting server that's been made available for everyone to access it and thus download licensed docs free of cost. The second way involves a peer-to-peer connection, utilizing the so-called Torrent web servers, via which users transmit files between each other. There are just a few website hosting distributors that allow that form of hosting on their hosting servers, mostly because of all the legal predicaments that it presupposes. Typically such web pages are hosted on personal dedicated web servers that are registered by 3rd party corporations either in the Middle East or in Asia.

Email Web Hosting - this solution is used with both shared web site hosting and dedicated web servers, depending on the user's intention. If you desire to launch your very own personal SMTP e-mail server, then you will need either a VPS server or a dedicated server that offers the access level needed to accomplish such a task. For conventional email web hosting purposes, however, you can open an average shared website hosting account, to which you can point the MX records of your domain. This is not a solution that's very used, because the web page hosting and the mail hosting services are being served by two different servers, often owned by different companies.

Site Hosting - the most famous and vastly utilized hosting service nowadays. It's utilized for hosting web site files, whose type is determined by the Operating System the web server is making use of - Linux or Windows. Different sorts of files demand concrete server OSs, or else they won't be exhibited properly on the Web. This form of web hosting may contain data storage and traffic limitations, server root access and central processing unit usage restrictions.

Based on the mission and on the functions, the customer should select the sort of web server that he demands for his project, and, of course, the web site hosting provider that's going to supply it. There are various sorts of web servers, based on the configuration and the web space hosting services that they provide. These are:

Shared Website Hosting Server - a shared web hosting server includes a smaller quantity of system resources, which, of course, reflects on the price of the service. It can be utilized for hosting small scale and medium sized sites, which do not need considerable quotas of web storage space and web traffic.

Semi-Dedicated Servers - they are based on the very same principle as the shared site hosting servers. In spite of that, there are much less customers accommodated on the same server. Therefore, each of them will get a larger quota of the web hosting server's resources like RAM, data storage space, traffic and CPU. Excellent for hosting huge sites that do not need complete root access.

Virtual Private Server - the VPSs are perfect for medium sized web sites, which do need root access to the web hosting server's configuration files. Generally, there are a few virtual server accounts sharing the same server. Even so, each of them is isolated from the other ones and has its own OS.

Dedicated Hosting - a fully dedicated physical server configured and accessed by you and solely you. It ensures an enormous quantity of resources. It also includes complete root access, which makes it the optimal platform for any kind of web portal that requires a web space hosting service.

The only question that remains is:

Which site hosting firm should I settle on?

As mentioned, there are very few hosts offering warez web hosting services due to judicial predicaments. Such hosts are being closed down practically every month. Because of that, if you would like to create such a service, you should do it on your very own computer. The shared web page hosting solution is the most popular kind of hosting service. Therefore, each hosting vendor provides it. Not all of them, however, offer solutions such as VPS servers, semi-dedicated servers and dedicated servers. Most of the small sized webspace hosting vendors do not have the resources needed for offering those services. Therefore it's invariably best to pick a bigger host that can provide its clients with all the services that they necessitate. You can quickly identify such web hosting companies by the types of services that they are providing and by the way that they introduce them to the clients. For instance, certain web hosting companies allow you to begin with a smaller web hosting package and subsequently upgrade to a bigger one, if you deem it compulsory to do so. This is very convenient, since you do not need to transmit sites between hosting servers and there is no risk of experiencing downtime due to all the predicaments that may crop up. Web hosts such as Free Hostia offer all sorts of solutions and have the required server resources and personnel to ensure that their clients will not run into any troubles when changing services, which is what a top hosting corporation is in fact all about.