Web Host, Disk Space, Bandwidth
Web hosting is a very profitable online niche market. Every online website needs web hosting as a platform. To understand everything about web hosting, you will first need to understand its various terms and definitions. The following are some of the common web hosting terms:
Web Host
The owner of the web hosting company is called the web host. The web host is also a person who looks after all the day-to-day web hosting business, its marketing, and everything related with his customers who have hired his web hosting services to upload their websites on the Internet. A web host can also usually designate his marketing officers or customer support officers to deal with his customers’ queries and complaints regarding the functioning of their websites. You, as a website owner, should contact the web host and request all the answers to all your questions regarding the website hosting features offered by his company before hiring him as you web host.
Disk Space
Any website is usually stored on a web server. The web server is similar to the computer hard disk and a website is similar to a folder present on the hard disk. In simpler terms, this example can give you an idea of how a website is stored on a web server. A website needs to store its various files on the web server. The web host will usually allocate the disk space for the website, and this is space is measured in megabytes (Mb.) or gigabytes (Gb.).
In this way, hundreds of websites are stored on a single shared web hosting server, and by sharing so many websites on a single server, the cost of web hosting becomes affordable to all the webmasters. Contrary to this sharing by many websites of a single web server, there are also web hosting plans available where the entire disk space along with all the resources of the web server is allocated to one single user. Such a web hosting plan, which is dedicated to a single user, is available as a dedicated web hosting package and the web server is called a dedicated web server.
Bandwidth
When an online web surfer accesses a web page from your website, he is effectively transferring the data from your web page to the web browser on his computer. If the web surfer is filling up a form on the web page and submitting it to the website, the transaction is again causing a web traffic that causes bandwidth usage. If the web surfer writes a comment in the comment space of the web page, this again causes a bandwidth usage.
If your website is a forum and there are plenty of members accessing the various topics and interacting with each other by writing comments, opening new threads, downloading some zip files from it, or are uploading images, or they are saving web page to their computer’s hard disk, or are simply viewing some web pages, then all these actions cause the usage of the bandwidth allocated to your website.
If you are using a FTP software to upload or download files to or from your website, then this again causes the usage of bandwidth. The bandwidth is usually allocated on monthly terms, and if you exceed the allocated bandwidth then your website will stop functioning on the Internet till the beginning of next month when the same amount of bandwidth is allocated for that month.
If your website becomes inaccessible due to using the monthly quota of the bandwidth, you will lose not only your web traffic, but also to lose any income that is generated from the website during this period. Therefore, you must study and plan for the required bandwidth for your website and keep a careful watch on its usage. If you are sure that there will be a surge in the bandwidth for any reasons during the month, you must take proper precautions and get it increased. Your web host will help you in this matter for an additional and reasonable fee.
Keeping a watch on the usage of the monthly bandwidth is very easy. For example, if you are using the Cpanel, you will be able to see how much bandwidth has been used within that month. It is also possible to keep a note of the web traffic to your web pages. You can see how the web traffic flows on your website, and you can optimize those web pages to convert the web traffic into sales of your products and services.
Continued…
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Tags: bandwidth, disk space, web host, web hosting terms – web hosting definitions