Web Hosting Facts

Web hosting is more than just putting some files on the web server. It is also a relationship between website owner and web hosting provider. The purpose of websites is to continuously offer access to web pages. Serving web pages without interruption or failures all around the clock. Of course, 100% up-time is not our goal and it would cost us a lot of money. A reasonable expectation is about 99.9% up-time. This means that on average 8 hours per year the system could be down. This is acceptable and doesn't cause much trouble to either website owner or visitors.

The things change when there are frequent malfunctions and the website is inaccessible for hours or even days. This is where we can start distinguishing good hosting from a not so good one. If the hosting provider doesn't have good support then the website owner quickly becomes frustrated and if the problems are not solved within few hours the web hosting service looses that customer. Loosing many customers means also loosing reputation. Bad reputation is the last thing a web hosting service provider wants.

The next important fact about hosting providers is the service they offer and/or advertise. To attract customers many web hosting providers promise unlimited "everything". Is this possible? Well, yes and no. Theoretically they don't limit disk size, bandwidth, number of domains, etc. The truth is that the web server is a physical machine, a computer with limited hard disk, limited processor capabilities, limited amount of memory, i.e. the computer is a limited resource. In addition to this, our web server is not hosting only our website (unless we have such hosting plan). Usually it hosts hundreds of websites. All the server resources are limited and shared between all websites hosted on this server. So you should understand properly the word "unlimited".

Another important fact about web hosting is connectivity with the internet. The connection between hosting provider and ISP should not be some bottleneck which limits how fast our pages load. The hosting provider should have a fast and reliable connection with the internet backbone. Pages that load slowly and even more slowly when the server is loaded are not visited frequently. We might loose visitors only because of poor internet connection of our web hosting provider.

Before we decide for web hosting company it is a good idea to check all key factors that contribute to fast and reliable hosting. We can contribute a lot to speed up our pages if we limit the resources that are needed to load the page. Pages without all the bells and whistles can also be useful to the visitors.

Home Web Hosting - Access Your Home Server From the Internet

If you are a webmaster developing or maintaining websites then you probably have a home web server for development or testing purposes. An old computer can easily be transformed into a Linux server. If you install also Apache, MySQL and PHP applications you will be able to host websites at your home. Of course, this is not the same hosting as offered by commercial providers, it is only a place where you can install, develop and test web applications. With some additional settings you can access your home computers from any place that has internet access. This is very convenient for getting files you forgot at home.

Assuming that you already have a local area network (LAN) including the router, which is a bridge between your computers and the internet, you need no additional equipment. In order to enable web access from the internet, you have to configure your router to forward outside web requests to the your server. The default port for web is 80, but you can choose any other port number to increase security.

The first prerequisite for remote access is a domain. This is the name of your home server on the internet. There are many services that offer free domains and free updating of IP addresses. This is especially important if you don't have a static IP address. Most internet providers dynamically assign IP addresses which change once a day or with every connection. Since knowing your external IP address is crucial to access your computers from the internet, you need a way to update the domain DNS records.

Many routers support popular dynamic DNS services like DynDns. If your router has no such function you can still install simple software utility on your computer which will update address every time it will be changed. You should create an account, select preferred domain name and choose your name which you will use as a sub-domain. This account data you should enter into the router settings or external software for IP address update.

Now you have access to your router. Each time you will enter your name followed by the chosen domain, you will reach you router. If you have enabled access to its user interface from the external port, you will be able to configure it as you do it from your home computer. To reach your server you need to configure port redirection. If you would like to use the standard port 80 for web access, then simply create a rule to forward external (public) port 80 to the local port 80 at IP address of your web server. This is everything that is needed to access your web server from anywhere.

For hosting of real websites especially if they are commercial in nature you need a reliable hosting like Hostgator. Simply because the website needs to be available 24 hours a day and downtime in the case of hardware failure should be as short as possible. Commercial hosting companies usually provide professional service for few dollars per month. This includes unlimited number of domains, unlimited disk space and many other goodies.

Having a possibility to access home computers from any location is very useful when you need some files or data from home. Even if you have a dynamic IP address you can access your development websites and show them to your friends or clients.