What is Hosting?

Most of them realize the importance of a good content. They hire a good web-developer to create a beautiful website or sometimes develop it themselves. But once it is done they think rest of the things don't really matter. This is not true. The actual business starts then. You will need to choose a good hosting provider to get your website online. Hosting provider are basically those who provide a space for your website on their server, so that it can work online.  They are responsible for your web services like file management and server space because it is practically impossible for everyone owning a website to have their own servers, since all can't afford one. Constant working of the server is very important for an undisturbed business, since the downtime can cause you loss of traffic and decreased page ranking. There are different types of hosting meant for different requirements.

There are too many hosting providers promising 100% uptime and cheaper prices. But not all keep up their promise. If you are a newbie for webhosting, you may end up choosing a service where you will later have to compromise with lot of things. Not all services suit all the websites. So depending on the type of your website, you will need to choose a hosting type and a provider. What exactly you are willing to do with your website matters when you choose a provider. To decide what exact type of hosting you need, it is important to know the types of available hosting.

Types of Website Hosting based on server type.

Shared Website Hosting

Shared hosting, a single server is shared by multiple websites. A shared server allows a user to get hosting space to store their files online, so that others can access them online.

Dedicated Website Hosting

In Dedicated web hosting, a web server is entirely devoted to your site. You may purchase your own server or pay for access to a server owned by someone else.

Virtual Private Server Website Hosting

A virtual private server, like the name says is a server shared by multiple users. However, each is maintained separately. This type of hosting is something of a combination of dedicated hosting and shared hosting.

Types of hosting based on Operating System

UNIX Hosting

The hosting means your website will be running on the UNIX operating system. This is the first and knows to be most reliable operating systems for the servers.

Windows Hosting

The hosting means your website will be running on the WINDOWS operating system. This is the service to choose if you are using ASP for server scripting and if you want to use databases like MicroSoft Access or MicroSoft SQL.

Website and Mobile

In my last post, I had mentioned how important a mobile phone is for our online business. Now let’s see how exactly it affects our website traffic. 

We all have set of visitors to our sites who prefer using their phones rather than any other means. Hence, if we do not have a mobile friendly website, we may lose these set of customers easily. We have to make sure that our hosting provider and website developer are both aware of this requirement. Most of the services providers do realise the importance of a mobile friendly website. But to be on safer side, its better we confirm it with them. 

Now if you have an informational website like mine, this requirement may not seem that critical. One reason for this is people usually visit these sites at their leisure time from office or home, where the alternate options to the mobile are available. The other reason is there isn’t much of difference in the mobile friendly versions and the web versions for such sites. You just need to make sure all those plugins, embedded stuffs, pop ups or any other additional features you have added to your site works without any issue with the phones.

But if you have a website which offers any kind of service or products then not having a mobile version will be critical loss for your site. One might need such service or a product anytime and anywhere, Hence visitors prefer to be able to access them from mobile phones. You must make sure you have all those feature accessible on our site via web is also accessible via a mobile phone. Make sure to check the mobile versions properly to see if the entire interface is as easier as in the original website.

A recipe for a successful website

What are the conditions your website should be fulfilling in order to become a successful site? Like we all know ‘content is king’. Content plays the most important role in a website.  But what exactly is a great content?  Well the answer is simple. Whatever creates an interest in your visitors and engage them in any way and make them want to come back again and again. But creating such content is not simple at all. You need to have someone who has a lot of knowledge on whatever your site is out.

Content doesn’t necessarily mean article or blog. It can be anything like video, images, tools which provide output, survey, poll, or anything which would engage your visitors and is useful for them.

Well this was about content. Other than this, there are many other things which would affect the success of your website. Once you have your site all set, the next important step is to get a best domain name for your site. Make sure you have your domain name right. You can refer my previous article on this.

Once you choose your domain name, get a good domain service provider and register your domain name. And the next step is to register a hosting account with hosting service providers. Most of the domain service providers also provide hosting service and the hosting service providers also provide domain service. It is good to have both your providers at one place. This way you’ll always know whom to go to whenever there is any problem with your site and it will be much easier to manage all at one place. But just for these reasons, you shouldn’t be compromising with any of the services. If you feel a company is mainly provide one of the two services and just to have everything in one place it is also providing the other too and it is not as good as the primary service they provide, do not hesitate to go for a different provider for the second service.

Along with the hosting and domain service, some of these providers also provide services like Ecommerce set up, Website creator tools for helping newbie and also allow installing third party service via their account panel.

These are few things you will have to think of before your launch your site.