Part 2

What's Web Hosting ?

Web hosting is similar to renting an office space within a commercial building so that you can carry out your businesses. On the same argument, web hosting is the renting of space and bandwidth from a hosting company so that you can publish, upload and make your business website online and be seen by everyone on the internet.

Off course, there are those companies offering free web hosting but these providers requires your website to support other businesses advertising banners, pop-ups, etc. As for those fully paid web hosting, they will hand over full site management control to you. This means that you can do whatever you wish to your site contents.

What is Virtual Hosting ?

This kind of hosting is also known as shared hosting.

What this means is to go back to our initial illustration of office space. In virtual hosting, you only rent a small portion of a total bigger space with lots of other people. As such, within one web server, there are many other businesses website being hosted together with yours. You are virtually shared - your site will not be the only one on this specific server.

These kinds of hosting method are usually suitable for most people except for professional internet marketers where they may not want other businesses to share with his business.

Very few sites would actually need the power of a dedicated server, so this option proved to be a reasonable, reliable and cheap solution to most people.

Why don't I just go with the cheapest hosting ?

Hosting companies are just like another other business where a health bottom line (good profit) is essential for the company growth. Companies whom shown profitability have the necessary capabilities to improves the level of services to the customers, purchase higher capacity equipments and employ more qualified personnel to assist the customers in resolving any technical issues.

Those that do not, are unlikely to be able or in any position, to do any of the abovementioned. Then there are some companies whom does not really understand the market, and may be pricing themselves too cheaply. Therefore, if you go to these companies, you may not be able to receive even a basic standard of services.

Off course, there are also a group of companies out there, whom are reliable and cheap and at the same time provides very good services. The big question here is whether you have the time to search for these companies as there are not many of them out there.

What is the difference between UNIX hosting and Windows hosting ?

The main difference here will depend on which operating system (OS) you are felt is more suitable for your own usage.

If you are familiar with, commonly use and your equipments supports Microsoft products such as ASP, MS Access, or VBScript, then Windows hosting would be better. Furthermore, if you are comfortable with IIS and do not have the time to understand how UNIX works, Windows hosting would again be a better choice.

However, there are some pointers that you must always remember.

First of all, just because you use Windows at home does not mean you should use Windows hosting. The two are completely different, and having a Windows system at home will not affect your ability to communicate with a UNIX server.

Secondly, Linux is much more common with web hosts due to its superior stability and because it is free. Since it is free, Linux hosting is usually cheaper than Windows.

Off course, just because it's free does not mean it's not as good - Linux is also an excellent product by itself.

How can I pay for web hosting services ?

Customers usually pay for web hosting services through various payment methods and this usually depends on which web hosting providers, you decide to work with. Most web host providers will accept credit cards, and some will accept PayPal and/or a Money Order / Check.

What is PayPal and can they be trusted to handle my financial ?

PayPal is a payment collection company, set up primarily to accept, forwards and transmitted payments. One of their best service is to allow anyone to pay another person anywhere in the world by simply using an email address.

Every user will first have to signs up with PayPal and then enters their necessary banking and credit card informations. Once registration is completed, your email address is all you need to send and receive money.

PayPal is currently owned by eBay.