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Web Hosting FAQ - Web Hosting questions and answers

Beginner questions

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What is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is the act of storing a web page or web site on a remote computer. The website is stored on a computer know as a webserer. Web hosting is the service provided by an ISP (web host) to publish your web pages on the internet. You pay the web hosting company to rent space on the websever and provide bandwidth.

What is a webserver?

A webserver just a fancy name for a computer that is connected to the internet and has a webserver program running on it. It's not necessarily more powerful than a modern day PC. The webserver program is responsible for serving out the page to when someone types in the websites address in their browser. Each physical webserver/computer may host many sites, sometimes 200 or more. More expensive web hosting plans will limit the number of other sites running on each machine. It is also possible to get a whole machine to yourself - this is know as a dedicated server or co located server.

Why can't I host a website myself - I have broadband?

It is indeed possible to host a website at home on your own webserver/computer but beware of the following: Many broadband providers prohibit running of a webserver on your high speed internet connection, they may even block webservers from your connection. The biggest downfall in my opinion is that if you read the fine print, DSL and Cable companies don't guarantee the uptime of the connection so it might go up and down during the day and so will your website. You will also need to have a dedicated machine that will need to be switched on all the time and some tech savvy friend to install linux on it. Turning off the machine turns off your website too. OK so I've put you off but don't let me put you off entirely - the best way to learn how a webserver works is to get your hands dirty and Linux distros such a Fedora come with the most popular webserver Apache pre installed. It's really quite easy, pop in the CD a few clicks and your have a linux webserver up and running in no time.

How go I create a website or webpage?

Web pages are just special types of text files containing HTML code (Hypertext Mark-up Language). They normally end in .html and if you open an html file in a text editor you will see that the file is really just a text file that contains the text of the web page as well as tags, special commands that tell the web browser how to display the text. Most people use HTML authoring software such as Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver to design web pages on their PCs /Macs rather than write the the html tags and text from scratch. I suggest getting your hands dirty with HTML, get an HTML book or go to one of the may on line html tutorials, fire up word pad or any text editor and start pissin around. If you start off by using one of the authoring programs you'll not really learn any html and when the authoring programs spits out rubbish as they do quite often you can look at the raw HTML code and know how to fix the problem.

What is a domain name?

The unique name that identifies an Internet website. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. A domain is your identity on line. It separates your website from everyone else's. They are normally renewed on a yearly basis. There are two parts to a domain – the domain name itself, and the TLD (top level domain) extension. The most popular TLD is the .com extension – it is normally associated with on line business. Due to the popularity of .com extensions, getting a good domain name is hard. You'll probably find the domain name you want, unless it's your first and last names, is already taken. You could also try variations of the name such as seperating the name if more than one word with dashes or adding numbers at the end of the domain.

How do I get my own domain name?

Firstly go to a domain registration company (we recommend Godaddy.com who have domains from 8.99 per year) and see if the domain is available. If it's already taken try a different variation of the name or a different suffix such as .net or .biz - Once the registrar indicates that domain is up for grabs you fill out a form and tell the registrar what DSN server you will be using. You can pay for it on line and it can be active within 24h assuming you have the site already created. Why pay more than $8.99/year per domain name - companies like register.com are charging $35/year to register a domain name - what a rip off!

Do I have to change my domain if I get a new host?

No. Provided that the domain is registered in your name (as it should be), you can simply update your namservers (from where you manage your domain names) to that of your new host.

How much should Web Hosting Cost?

Web hosting can cost anywhere from $3 a month for a very basic and perhaps slightly unreliable hosting company to hundreds of dollars per month for a dedicated web server.

Should I consider free webhosing?

As with most things in life, you get what you pay for - free webhosting suits some people's needs but you have to be aware of the downfalls of free web hosting such as ultra annoying pop up ads on every page of your website and bandwidth limitations too. Paid hosting will have advantages like more disk space, access to multiple programming languages, databases, SSL servers, anon FTP, regular backup, guaranteed uptime, access to server configuration files like .htaccess and to raw logs and statistics

What is Virtual Web Hosting?

Virtual Web Hosting is having a web site at your unique domain name without having to manage the hardware and software in house.

How do I transfer files to my web site ?

Files are normally transferred to a web server from your computer via the File Transport Protocol (FTP). Numerous FTP programs exist, the most common one for the pc is WSftp and you can try Transmit for the Mac.

What exactly is space and bandwidth/data transfer?

Diskspace is the amount of space the hosting company will give you on their hard drive. HTML pages are usually very small, but it is the extra images, scripts, and even databases that can take up large amounts of disk space. Bandwidth/Transfer is the amount of data the server will allow your site to send in a month. Transfer is usually measured in gigabytes - billions of bytes. Once you go over your monthly limit, a host may either shut your site down for the remainder of the month or it can charge you 'overage.' This overcharge is usually about $2.00-$5.00 per extra gigabyte of transfer.

What are PHP, ASP, Perl, etc?

These are all programming languages which are referred to by their acronyms. PHP - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor ASP - Active Server Pages Perl - not an acronym Each programming language has its own benefits and uses. It is best that you research on your own to find one that best fits your needs.

What is MySQL, MS SQL, etc?

MySQL and MS SQL are database systems. Depending on what your host provides, you can use a database to organize your data.

What is uptime?

Uptime is literally what it means - it is the amount of time your site is on line throughout the entire month. The best uptime would be 100%, but because things can break, many hosts offer 99.9% uptime guarantees. This means that if your site is not accessible for more than 43 minutes in a single month, they will reimburse you, depending on their terms of service.

What is the difference between UNIX hosting and Windows hosting?

Depending on which operating system to go with depends on your needs. If you need to support Microsoft products such as ASP, MS Access, or VBScript, then Windows hosting would be better. Furthermore, if you are comfortable with IIS and do not have the time to understand how UNIX works, Windows hosting would again be a better choice. Linux is much more common with web hosts due to its superior stability and because it is free. Since it is free, Linux hosting is usually cheaper than Windows. Just because it’s free does not mean it’s not as good - Linux is an excellent product too.

How will people find my web site?

So you've designed a little website, signed up for hosting and upload her in all her glory - NOW WHAT! You can send your pals your URL but if you want to get her up there in the spotlight then you're gonna have to get her into google. The easiest way to do this is to find a friend who has a website already listed in google and get them to put a link on their site pointing to your work of art. You could also tell google about your site directly - by clicking here

What is an IP address?

Every computer that is connected to a network or the internet (more specifically a TCP/IP network) normally is identified by a group of four number seperated by periods - this is the computers Internet Protocol (IP) address.

What is a static IP address / Shared IP

A Static ip is unique to your website. For example 123.2.234.234 is your website ip address, you can access your website by typing- http://123.2.234.234/ in the browser. That means this unique number represents your website in the WWW. Shared ip is shared by two or more websites/domains. You can access the websites that share the same ip by- http://www.123.2.234.234/~user1/ http://www.123.2.234.234/~user2/ http://www.123.2.234.234/~user3/ etc Normally it's not necssary to have a dedicated ip address for your website but you may need it if your doing search engine optimization or host an ecommerce website with a SSL certificate.