How to choose hosting site

Hosting the website provides several services related to storing and ensuring the public availability of site pages: HTTP server for reading pages, FTP server for transferring files, mail server, SQL databases, visit statistics. In addition to disk space and traffic restrictions, these services will determine the choice of hoster.

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Refer to the dictionary for technical terms...

Placement types

Mutual placement

They are shared on the same server and hard drive. Disk space and maximum monthly traffic or maximum hits may limit your audience's use of server resources.
The client does not have server administration capabilities and depends on the services offered. It's much easier, of course, as it just puts content online.

Special accommodation

This type of placement consists of space and resources on external equipment. You are given some bandwidth, which allows you to manage and configure the server. Select this option when you want to configure the server, or when you want to host multiple nodes, and when sharing is out of date.
It is also possible to have a virtual server running on a software server associated with a remote hardware server.
Colocation is the possession of a server that is physically located with others at the provider.

Clean housing

In this case, they do not resort to an external provider, their own computer is turned into a server using specialized software, for example, Apache, Windows Server, etc. The manager integrated into the operating system associates the domain name with the computer address.
The computer must work constantly, and availability is mandatory for managing overloads, failures...

Cloud: Azure, AppStream, App Engine

This is a mutual conversion of the initiate. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others offer a platform for hosting their site with maximum freedom, when on the server, programming languages, tools, without caring about the material aspects. See comparison of hosting professional sites.

Social media

They are a combination of social networking and hosting, extrapolation of blog hosting, and offer a space with development and distribution tools where the user can host and develop a web application or build computers and share with others. Facebook, which blogs, offers the service like other social networks, which ended Microsoft's Popfly project. Google + competes with it.

Projects

Hosting software projects has long existed on sourceforge.net or gituba, but use is becoming much more general and will focus on non-programmers. You can put anything on GitHub.

Features of co-location

Prices and services offered at the hostels on offer vary substantially.
Traps that should be avoided, if there is a clearly favorable offer, are, on the one hand, a lack of services such as PHP, htaccess, statistics, or a limitation on bandwidth or the number of monthly hits.

MySQL database

Usually with the MySQL manager. This allows you to manage user accounts, create a dynamic site based on data, and use the Content Manager (CMS).
View the number of databases, the maximum size and the maximum number of simultaneous connections (7 is required for a site more than 1000 visits per day ).

Disk space

It's not a problem these days. 10 gigs is enough for a blog or portal site that does not share images or videos.

Maximum monthly bandwidth or traffic

Expressed in megabytes or gigabytes, this is the maximum aggregate size of files read or downloaded from the site, including html pages, images, archives, queries, and database responses.
When the monthly limit is reached, transfers are stopped or an additional price is requested, depending on the hosting (see its regulations).

Maximum hits per month

The number of hits, that is, requests to the server, is not the number of visitors, the number of access or pages, but each element read on the site to fill the page: image, database access, etc.
If the page contains nine images, it issues 10 queries on the network. Suppose that the hosting limits 10,000 requests per day and the visitor watches an average of 5 pages, (unofficial statistics) the site will be calculated up to 2000 visits per day .
This option is out of date.

Mail function

Cheap hosts do not have the function of sending email to PHP, which can interfere with the use of CMS.

Email

Associated with hosting are e-mail management capabilities with a domain name on the right side (former moi@example.com): storage location, catch-all (redirection of any left term associated with a domain name) and other capabilities.

Htakkess

The ability to install this file, interpreted by the server, to manage redirects.

PHP

PHP is a server-side programming language, even if the code is inserted into HTML pages loaded by the browser. It allows you to create content by code on pages or with scripts.
Version 5 has more developed XML capabilities, and a more complete thematic orientation is the norm today.
To switch to PHP 5, you may need to add a configuration line to .htaccess.
You can also use ASP for the Windows server.

Statistics

Most hosters offer complete statistics using Awstats, Webyser, or other software. They indicate the number of visitors per day, page views per visitor, the site on which the excursion was conducted, etc.

SSL

Secure access required to receive money, that is, for an e-commerce site.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol - Internet access protocol used to download files or send site content. You can also create spaces on the site that are available to third parties in FTP mode, when allowed by the hoster.

Multiple domains and multiple domains

Hosting can support multiple domains pointing to different subdirectories, allowing multiple sites to be used on the same hosting. But it can only withstand different domains pointing to the same hosting. In this case, different domains have the same content, and if we are not careful, this can cause problems with content duplication in relation to search engines.

POP MUSIC

A POP account is a physical storage of email on a hosting server (or registrar).

Web mail

Internet E-mail and E-mail Viewer Service.

Customer support

This is often the weak point of cheap hostels. If the site is commercial, you cannot be content with one support per forum, even if this is enough to solve some problems, others require intervention on the server.

Other criteria

Operating system: Windows or Linux. Server: Apache or Windows Server. Price. Payment frequency.

Major hosters

For co-location or special placement.

See also