What is Web Hosting?

In the era of computerization where most of the work is dependent on computers, web Hosting is serving as a boon for business for any sector or any activity. Web Hosting is a type of internet hosting system that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible through world wide web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing internet connectivity, typically in a data center . Webhosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called collocation.

Types of hosting.
Moving further on the above topic , following are some of the commonly known types of hosting.:

- Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server.

- Shared web hosting services: one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.

- Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.

- Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting Virtual dedicated server: slicing up a server into virtual servers. each user feels like they're on their own dedicated server, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users. The users may have root access to their own virtual space.

- Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.

- Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.

How to obtain Hosting?
Now-a-days its easy to avail this facility of web hosting due to enormous growth of I.T.sector and more enormous competition among several providers. Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.

A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows for its hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP.

Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System so the end-user doesn't have to worry about the more technical aspects.

One may also search the Internet to find active webhosting message boards and web hosting blogs that may provide feedback on what type of webhosting company may suit his/her needs.