What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is a service that hosting service providers offer so that you can publish your web site on the Internet.

How can people open your site?

When you develop a website and you wish other persons to observe it, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a web hosting server. If you attempt to render the web site reachable online by shared hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it always online, which is why website hosting services came into being.

How does shared hosting work?

Web hosting corporations offer you disk drive space for your website on their high-end computers (hosting servers) and ensure constant Internet access. When someone writes your URL (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's address bar, they will be connected to the hosting server where they can have a look at the content of your web site.

Types of hosting

With the progress of Internet technologies, different types of web hosting services have emerged to fulfill the various requirements of web site owners, among them shared website hosting services, private virtual server web hosting services and dedicated hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared hosting is the most popular form of hosting, and is also the easiest to begin with. It is a service where one single web server is divided among a lot of hosting users who are limited by the CPU, bandwidth and hosting server hard disk space quotas that they have been allocated. This form of hosting is usually cheaper - you don't have to pay for the whole web server upfront, as it is shared between numerous hosting users, and the web hosting distributor can afford to offer much more moderate prices. It is also much easier to use - the hosting server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the web hosting supplier takes care of all server maintenance procedures and security updates on your behalf.

The weak side of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's resources with other hosting account owners and if a given web site becomes very busy it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the web sites on that web server, but most web hosting suppliers, including us at CNYDomain, have security platforms at work that hinder that from taking place.

A definition of a web hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most common type of web hosting, the majority of web hosting firms and hosting users simply call it hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive rivalry on the website hosting market, the majority of web hosting service providers strive to offer reasonable prices and bonuses with their web hosting services. We, for instance, provide different website hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and annual, depending on your funds. If you pick the yearly invoicing cycle, you will obtain a bonus - one free-of-cost domain name registration.

Virtual private servers

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The Virtual private servers hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated hosting solution. If your site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting account, a virtual hosting server is an excellent option. Virtual Private Server web hosting account holders still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other virtual server web hosting users, but the physical server is partitioned using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured practically like an actual dedicated hosting server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a VPS web server are not shared. In addition, the virtualization software offers you much more autonomy to configure your virtual private web server, but it also calls for a more advanced degree of technical knowledge.

Dedicated Server

With the Dedicated Server solution, the client gets a whole dedicated web hosting server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most reliable of all website hosting solutions and offers many configuration possibilities - the dedicated hosting users can pick the hardware and software specs that will meet their requirements. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated web server hosting plan is a perfect choice for a heavy resource-swallowing corporate web site, for instance - you will not share the web server's resources with anyone else and will be bestowed with full server root privileges. You will have full authority over the hosting server, which will enable you to make any configuration modifications that you might require. The downside of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical competence is required - unless you engage an IT pro, it will be your duty to administer and configure the dedicated hosting server. The dedicated server hosting solution is also far more high-priced, because the cost of the dedicated server isn't shared between any other users.

A web hosting recommendation for beginner users

If you are just beginning to set up your site and are searching for a website hosting solution to start out with, the shared website hosting solution persists to be the most appropriate option. If your site grows beyond your hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for instance, this is extremely easy and does not involve migration of your website files, since only the parameters of your account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting plan to a more advanced one at any given moment without worrying about the number of days remaining before the expiration date. Also, if you finally reach the most advanced shared web hosting package and still require more system resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it indicates that your site's popularity has increased!), there always is the option to switch to a virtual private web server or a dedicated hosting web server without needing to swap hosting providers.