Web hosts come under many names: ASP Hosting, Cold Fusion Hosting, Java Hosting, PHP Hosting; and as such, so must web hosting reviews. When scouring the various web hosting reviews in print and on the internet to help find the web host that most addresses your specific and unique needs, you'll come across many of these “names”, these specialized types of web hosting products. Many of them you may not need, but the one or two that you do, you may need a lot. Knowing which types of hosting products you require most will help you review web hosting reviews with a keener (and therefore more efficient, effective, and economical) eye.
If the web hosting review mentions ASP Hosting, it's referring to Active Server Pages, a technology that resolves a problem HTML-users have in getting their web pages to appear exactly as they intend them to appear on every visitor's computer. ASP uses something called “server-side scripting” to enable you to create uniform web pages regardless of the web browser your visitors are using.
If the web hosting review mentions Colocation Hosting, it means that you would actually own the hardware the datacenter uses to run your website. With colocation hosting, you physically purchase a server and bring it to the datacenter and install it and maintain it yourself. For less cost than a dedicated server, you get the benefits of a datacenter (connectivity, environmental regulation, security, uninterruptible power) while maintaining 100% control over what your server does and does not do. The caveat: anything you want done, you've got to do yourself. Colocation hosting is a DIY (do-it-yourself) situation.
If the web hosting review mentions Cold Fusion Hosting, it refers to database software developed by Macromedia, the same team who brought us Flash and Shockwave. Cold fusion allows web interactivity with your databases, meaning that you can query, index, update, and chart your databases all from your web browser.
If the web hosting review mentions FrontPage Hosting it means you get support and -- most importantly -- server extensions for using Microsoft FrontPage software to create your website. FrontPage lets you create dynamic and interactive websites that you can't achieve with HTML alone. A FrontPage host (and only a FrontPage host) has FrontPage server extensions enabled, which allows you to bypass using an intermediary FTP client in order to publish your site. FrontPage server extensions give you the power to include hit counters, forms, discussion forums, and search functionality in your website, as well as empowering you with multi-user authoring, and remote authoring and administration for better managing your site.
Keep in mind: a single web hosting provider may very well offer many of these hosting services, and quite likely many others not mentioned here. Check the web hosting reviews you read very carefully to find out which hosting services each web host offers.
See Part II of this article next week to learn about web hosting reviews for Java hosting, MySQL hosting, PHP hosting, SSH hosting, and Windows hosting.
Web Hosting With Asp
Well let's talk about it. First the basic idea of web hosting is that a web host is part of a system of computers that make the internet possible. What I mean is that these are large computers that have memory enough to contain the data on web pages for everyone to access at any point in time.
If web pages were supported by the owner's own computer the internet would clearly not be nearly as accessible or as fast. Personal computers just do not have the processors to handle the enormous amounts of traffic that a web hosting server can support. And when a person's computer shut down or malfunctioned there would be no accessing that page. Also there are a lot of things on a personal computer that you wouldn't want people getting their hands on. Another good reason to have a separate place for your site.
So though it may seem infinite there is a finite amount of space (or memory if you want to think of it that way) on the internet. These computers (or more properly servers) are huge and there are more coming online every day and so there will never be less than the increasing demand. However the fact that the space is finite creates the ability for these servers to put a price on the space. Generally though this price is not prohibitive and this is somewhat controlled by competition between web hosting companies. One of the nicer additions to the industry has be the recent addition of several new discount web hosting companies.
There are also several services that the web hosting companies provide for their customers besides simply space to hold information. The most basic of these services is that of internet connectivity. There must be a way for a person on the internet to get to the data that is stored in a server. Therefore addresses located on the internet need to "point" the user to the information. Internet connectivity takes place through something called a data center which is provided by the web host. It is important to point out here that the data center can point traffic to other servers not owned by that particular host. So you could own space in one host's server and receive your connectivity through another host's data center.
Other services include database support and application development platforms as well as web interfaces that allow you to manage the web server. These services are specially designed for different types of applications. Basically the web hosting company will set up to host different types of sites so that they can offer specific tools to those customers.
Both Sage Kalmus & Dylon Floppours are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Dylon Floppours has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, Software and Personal Desktop. Dylon Floppours has been teaching internet systems technology at the college level since the internet got going in the 80's, and loves explaining things like why