By: Aftab Bashir

Learn what you need to know about shared hosting, SSL, and a lot more to launch your own website.

Do you want to start your own website for art, business, or blogging? When you start a new business, a website helps show customers the products you’re offering. Creating a digital portfolio to display your work may be the first step in pursuing an artistic career. Or maybe you just want to start blogging. 

Our guide will help you choose the right web-hosting plan no matter what your reasons are.

But What Exactly is a Web Host Service?

The companies that offer web hosting services, like GoDaddy and DreamHost, own and operate servers on which websites are stored so they can be viewed online. Servers are like apartment buildings, and web hosting is the landlord. Your website is essentially renting space on these servers and accessing resources.

Understand the Basic Features of Web Hosting Plans.

What you want from your website will help you choose the best web hosting plan. Listed below are 2 basic plans.

Hosting on a Shared Server

Shared hosting involves storing site data on a server alongside other sites. Sites share the same resources, so if one site gets more traffic, it will use more resources. Consequently, your website might slow down if another site experiences a spike in visitors. For that reason, shared hosting plans are best if you are just starting out or don’t expect a lot of traffic. A shared hosting account with Hostinger or iPage costs about $2 a month.

A VPS Costs More.

With a Virtual Private Server hosting plan, the server on which your site is located is partitioned virtually so that it feels like your site is stored on its own server — it is essentially in its own bubble on its own server. Shared hosting is less stable than VPS hosting. VPS hosting is the best choice for small businesses or for artists who can’t afford to have their site slow down on a shared server. The cost of some VPS plans, like those offered by A2 Hosting, starts around $5 per month.

Is It Possible not to Share a Server With Others?

If so, a dedicated hosting plan is the best option. As opposed to shared or virtual private server hosting, dedicated hosting plans give you access to an entire server or servers. Your website will have the most traffic and resources with these plans. These plans are, however, more expensive due to the extra space and resources. You may need a dedicated server if you run a large organization or business. Plan prices for dedicated servers, such as those from DreamHost, can reach $150 a month. 

How do reseller plans work?

The reseller hosting business allows users to purchase large amounts of web hosting in bulk, at a discount, and resell the extra space for a profit. Individuals can act as a digital middleman between a web hosting service and the website owner. They must determine the types of services offered, templates for the services offered, and pricing. Many people treat the service as a business in itself. Nevertheless, many providers do not provide resell hosting. There are web hosting services, such as HostGator, that offer reseller hosting plans for around $20 a month.

Is WordPress Hosting a Good Choice?

First, let’s explain what a content management system (CMS) is.

CMS

Users can customize the appearance of their website and how the content appears on it by using a CMS. In addition, you can use a website builder to get started, but these may not provide all the features and controls you need. Additionally, you do not own the design content on your site, so it could also disappear without your knowledge. 

CMSs provide you with more control over how your site looks. With CMSs, you have access to more design tools, and since CMSs are open-source, you fully own what you create. 

Hosted by WordPress

Therefore, WordPress hosting is an optimized web hosting plan designed to run WordPress as a CMS. During the installation of WordPress as a CMS, the web hosting company ensured that their servers could run WordPress smoothly and efficiently, and they will handle any WordPress CMS updates that may arise. The great thing about WordPress is that it is more user-friendly than other CMSs, and you can still find a lot of templates, widgets, and plug-ins to make the best site for you.

So, What exactly is cloud hosting?

It is web hosting offered by multiple physical servers. Since your data is split across multiple servers, if one goes down, your site won’t be affected as much as if it were hosted on one server. It is, however, quite expensive, and only large sites, such as Facebook or Google, would benefit from it. Your site can, one day, grow to the same size as theirs, but for now, don’t worry about that option.

Managed vs. Unmanaged Servers: What are the Differences?

Any server administration issues — including resetting the server or updating it — are handled by the web hosting service as part of the managed server plan. These plans can be beneficial for those with little to no experience managing servers. Dedicated or managed VPS plans typically start at around $50 per month.

Any administrative issues need to be handled by you with an unmanaged server plan. The unmanaged VPS or dedicated server is perfect for someone who is tech-savvy or wants to learn system administration. Costs are usually not more than $5 a month.

Can you explain what domains and IP addresses are? 

As with a business name, a domain is what you call your website. In order to make sure your domain name cannot be taken already, you need to compare it against a ledger of domain names kept by a domain registrar. Similar to when you open a new social media account and the platform lets you know if someone else already has your username.

A business’ IP address, however, designates where it is on the server. Think of it as your home address. Changing the domain of your site usually does not affect the IP address.

How do I get email addresses for my domain?

Yes, you can. Instead of @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, your address can be @yourcooldomain.com. Your email will have credibility with this address, so people won’t consider them scams. You can only have a limited number of email addresses in your web hosting account under many web hosting plans. It usually increases as you move up the tiers, and some services offer unlimited email addresses with certain plans, like DreamHost. 

What are the chances of my site going down?

It is possible to lose your site data in numerous ways, including if your server becomes infected with a virus, if your server crashes from excessive use or if an update went wrong. Backups are similar to saving points in video games. If you have any problems with your site, you can restore it back to that point. Backups are included in many web hosting plans. Backups offered by companies such as GoDaddy include the scanning and storing of data free of malware. In many cases, backups aren’t advertised, so you have to inquire about the service’s backup policy. Backups are offered by some services weekly or monthly, but none at all by others.

Does This Answer Your Question About Web Hosting?

Web hosting is a complex field and we’ve barely scratched the surface. There are a lot of terms you’ll come across when looking at web hosting plans, such as data storage and uptime. Learn what they mean and why they matter. 

Data storage 

You have a certain amount of storage space available on the server for the data on your site. The storage requirements of video, music, and picture slideshows are high. Typically, storage is measured in gigabytes or terabytes, but some plans offer unlimited storage. It’s the amount of storage space on the server at that point that limits you. Because shared hosting is a shared service, some plans will offer unlimited storage.

Bandwidth 

Your hosting plan may limit your bandwidth to 5GB a month, meaning you can only send your viewers 5GB of data each month from your website. You could send 300 megabytes of data to your visit if you have a one-page site loaded with media. Similar to how you incur extra charges when you exceed your phone’s data limit, you could easily exceed your monthly bandwidth within a few more visits. There are, again, services that offer unlimited/unmetered bandwidth, but your site’s bandwidth usage has to comply with the terms and services of the web hosting provider. According to hostgator.com, you should not use more than 25% of the server resources for longer than 90 seconds if you want unlimited bandwidth. 

Uptime

Servers will go down from time to time for various reasons because technology isn’t flawless. Essentially, uptime is the time during which a server and the websites on that server are continuously available without going down. Most web hosting services state that they guarantee 99.9% uptime. Any time your site goes down is scary, but these guarantees mean it might be down for about 20 minutes a month. Contact your web hosting provider if your site is down for longer than expected. The majority of web hosting services will credit you with a percentage of your monthly fee for every hour their server is down.

SSL certificates

SSL is also called Secure Sockets Layers. This encrypts data passed to or from your website. Several websites use SSL certificates to protect people’s credit card information or personal information from being intercepted by hackers. It was announced in 2018 that Chrome would mark any site without a SSL certificate as insecure. A padlock next to a URL means that a website’s SSL certificate has been installed. This will make people feel more confident about visiting your site. Many hosting services offer SSL services.

It is, however, possible to install your own SSL certificates in most cases. SSL certificates can be purchased for a fee, like from Namecheap, which costs about $6 a year, or they can be free, like from Let’s Encrypt. Installing SSL certificates on your site requires some server knowledge. You will be able to have greater control over your website if you install and maintain your own SSL certificate, but if you cannot install and maintain your own SSL certificate, you might wish to stick with the SSL certificate offered by the web host.