Internet Business 101

Internet Business 101 : Hosting Defined

Hosting Defined
Author: Jason A. Martin

Before shopping for hosting it is important that you grasp certain terms and lingo. The hosting world can be very confusing because of the different terms, lack of a standard in sale pitches, and the spin many companies put out regarding their hosting service. Purchasing hosting does not need to become a nightmare.

When your website is visited in any fashion (by a person, bot, etc), it uses bandwidth. There are many ways to measure bandwidth and this is where the confusion comes in. Many hosting companies talk in terms of GIGs. A gig is roughly 1000 megs of data which is roughly 1000 kilobytes of data.

Example: You have 1 page at your website with only text and that page takes up 100 kilobytes (commonly referred to as 100k). When 10 calls to this webpage are made, you will have spent 1mb (meg or megabyte) of bandwidth. When 10,000 calls to this webpage are made, you will have spent 1 gig (or gigabyte) of bandwidth.

Therefore, when buying hosting, a package may state the hosting terms, price and have the bandwidth in terms of gigs it comes with. Your disk space is also measured in the same terms. Normally web space will be listed in the form of megs (for really small hosting solutions) or gigs. It is very important to read all the data about a hosting package before buying anything. Look for what happens when you spend more bandwidth than you purchased (commonly called overage). Most companies will charge you a high rate for overages which is why it is important to think before you commit.

Stay away from any hosting company that offers “unlimited bandwidth” in the plan. There is no such thing. Think of it this way. You wonder into a local buffet which claims you can eat all you want. They know of course that you can only eat so much. However, what would happen if you had some special ability to eat everything in the place? How about if you came back everyday and did the same thing? They would cut you off in a New York minute. The same principle applies to those offering unlimited bandwidth. Most of these companies put bandwidth reducers on the lines so no matter how many people try to come to your website, you can not go over their set limit. I don’t want to get too technical here so just avoid these companies like the plague.

Plans may include such things as: asp, php, MySQL, perl, cgi and cold fusion. These are all programming features that you may or may not need depending on your website. Just about every good host comes with these options included so you should not need to worry about it.

Unix or Windows? Unix is the best type OS for servers period. Unix servers come in many flavors but the typical ones you will hear about are: FreeBSD and Red Hat. Unless you need a Windows OS server for some personal reason, don’t bother. Over the past eleven years, I have mainly had Unix servers but have used Windows OS servers for testing. The difference is night and day in my opinion—Unix is king. If you have a plain website with no frills, either OS will do the job but Unix is much more secure.

Most hosting will come with a control panel. There are various kinds out there but two of the more popular ones are Cpanel and Plesk. A control panel allows a person to quickly do administration functions on their website and/or server. It is very user friendly so the novice can now accomplish tasks with simplicity. I would recommend you make sure a control panel will be installed with your hosting choice. Even for the experienced it makes some tasks extremely quick.

Hosting packages come in three main flavors: Co-location, dedicated and shared.

Co-Location: You ship the hosting company your server and they set it up in their data center.

Dedicated: You get a leased server all to yourself. This is the recommended plan (more in part two of this series).

Shared: Your website(s) are located on a server with other people’s websites. (only recommended for non-mission critical sites).

Part two of our hosting 101 series.

Jason A. Martin has been conducting business on the Internet for 11 years. He is a free-lance writer on many topics and is currently working on obtaining a degree in Journalism and Law.

His official blog can be viewed at: Jason A. Martin

©2005 Jason Andrew Martin LLC

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