Web Hosting Basics Part 2: What’s Going On Behind the Curtain
Posted by Kevin Hazard, July 19th, 2006
You are at your computer. You type “www.site5.com,” and in a few seconds of internet magic, a beautiful (and most likely redesigned in the past week or two) website appears on your screen. No, this phenomenon does not happen because Al Gore invented the internet and somehow embedded a secret binary code that will forever index any possible domain name you can enter. There is a relatively simple behind the scenes process that happens each time you access a website, and when you begin to understand how domains, servers, IP addresses, and content work together, it is a lot easier to understand what web hosting is.
What Happens Behind the Scenes
When you type a domain name into your browser or click a link, you are calling that website’s data from a server. Your browser knows where to find the correct server because each domain has a DNS (Domain Name Service) entry and an IP address. DNS will tell your browser the IP address of the website you requested (basically where the website lives), and the browser retrieve the content you requested from the server at that IP address.
The Server Shuffle
A server is simply a computer responsible for giving (or serving) information to anyone trying to access it. Everyone with a website could theoretically own and maintain their own server for their sites, but because the cost of maintaining the server and ensuring top performance at all hours is typically too high for an average user’s income (and because a server has the ability to host hundreds of sites), most website creators “rent” the necessary space to serve their websites. The company or individual that is allowing others to rent space he/she controls is the web host, and the web hosting industry is essentially the amalgamation of everyone trying to get customers to rent their space. In the web hosting industry, you will run into a three major divisions: shared, reseller, and dedicated.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most affordable, most available, and easiest to use among the three divisions. Several providers offer this type of hosting for free if your sites feature their advertisements, but these providers usually cripple your ability to expand and enhance your website in a quick and easy manner.
A standard shared hosting account as of July 2006 has around 2 gigabytes of space for a monthly fee of around $10. For most beginners, one of these plans is the perfect stepping stone into the world of hosting because the plans are usually upgradeable if you need more space, and they will not break the bank if you take your time to learn more about the technologies (which, as I said, is not a requirement to get a solid site up and running).
Reseller Hosting
The second major division of web hosting industry is reseller hosting. Essentially, reseller hosting gives you a bit more space than a normal hosting account with the intention of allowing you to “resell” the space you are renting. If you have a group of friends who all want to have their own website, you can order a larger reseller hosting plan and split it up into several independent plans (which would be equivalent to individual hosting plans). This option is very popular because you can have your site up and running, and if you have your own customers who pay you a set fee monthly, you could theoretically not pay anything for your plan (since you just use their money to pay your hosting provider) or you can make money on the deal (bring in more money from customers than you pay to your provider). A common fear among new resellers is “How do I charge people? That sounds complicated and too much of a hassle,” but new reseller accounts commonly provide a billing system to assist in this process.
Dedicated Hosting
The third main division in the web hosting industry is dedicated hosting. With a dedicated hosting plan, you are paying a hosting provider for your own server that they will monitor and maintain for you. This solution is most commonly used for larger businesses or customers who need more space and/or freedom for their website. When you pay for dedicated hosting, you are renting an entire server (which the provider could have split up into a few hundred shared accounts if it was being used for shared hosting), so the cost will be significantly higher than that of a shared or reseller plan.
A Little More About Hosting
In each of the hosting plans, you will see variations in price based upon disk space, bandwidth, and features. Disk space is exactly what it sounds like: the amount of space you have to put your files on the server. The more complicated variation is bandwidth, which is a limit on the amount of information going to or coming out of your account. Every time someone accesses your site to read your weblog (also known as a blog or online journal) or to download a family video, the amount of bandwidth they used is the same as the amount of data they transferred. More simply, if someone downloaded a 10 megabytes video, they used 10 megabytes of bandwidth (You will have also used 10 megabytes of bandwidth to upload the video). Clearly, users need more bandwidth than they do space, but for new users, most disk space and bandwidth levels are considerably higher than the user will ever use or need.
In general, hosting has become a commodity based upon space and bandwidth, and features have more or less become standard. You could theoretically host your site from a command line interface (try not to shudder as you remember the blinking cursor of the MS-DOS operating system), but several control panels have been created to help you easily control your site, so the majority of hosts will offer one of the common systems. This fact is not necessarily a bad thing, but the reliance on third-party control panels alleviates the need for development of new systems. In these control panels, you can control the creation of email accounts (yournames@yourdomain.com), the ability to add and remove files from your site, and the other basic functions you would typically need for a basic website. Unfortunately, the hosting industry has resigned itself to the idea that customers are experienced, know what they need (or at least what everything means), and that the current systems are entirely sufficient for what those customers need.
In the Next Installment
Next we will look into what you should look for in a new host. As I mentioned, there are thousands of options, and theoretically, all of them do the same thing… But hopefully we will be able to sort out characteristics of a host you want.
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