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Choosing a Web Host to Publish Your Web Site
Web hosting is the term that refers to the service involving the placement of your Web site onto the Internet through a computer server. Once this is done, anyone anywhere in the World is able to access those Web pages and view the information that is provided there for them.
| "What is Web Hosting?" |
| - MindSpring Biz |
Think of a Web hosting service as providing a location in cyberspace for your online business. It is much like the landlord you would deal with in the offline world, if you were setting up a store in a strip mall. For example, if you signed a lease with a landlord, then for a monthly fee you would get a certain amount of square footage for your store, parking for your customers, electricity for your equipment, and certain other standard services to keep your business running smoothly.
| In cyberspace, a Web host is the landlord for your online business. For a monthly fee, your Web host provides you with a certain amount of disk space to house your Web site, bandwidth for your customers to | Verio Web Hosting Services |
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| visit, design capabilities to build your Web site, andmany other services to help you run your online business. The choice of a Web hosting service should be based on its monthly service charge; the amount of disk space you will receive; access to reports, phone support availability; and ancillary services like credit card processing. | ||
Just as in the offline world, where there are many types of landlords, in the online world there are many different types of Web hosting services. There are firms that specialize in hosting entire computer systems for very large and highly trafficked Web sites, like Exodus Communications, and firms that specialize in hosting thousands of small business Web sites, like Verio web hosting.
In order to provide service for its customers, a Web hosting company normally has a lot of computers, or Web servers, that are attached to the to the Internet. On each computer, or server, resides a number of individual Web sites. For instance, a server might house hundreds, or even thousands, of different Web sites. Each individual Web site is owned and published by a different small business, like yours. In effect, you are renting disk space and access to the Internet from a Web host.
It is entirely possible for you to set-up your own server and connect it directly to the Internet. However, the costs and technical challenges of establishing an online business through this method are often prohibitive for smaller businesses. This is analogous to you building your own phone network, as opposed just paying a phone company for service.
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