What Does a Web Hosting Service Do?

The code, images, videos and text that make up a website must be stored somewhere. Without a stable digital repository, none of us would be able to constantly access content on the web. A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for customers, that is, it offers the necessary facilities to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies that offer web hosting services are sometimes referred to as web servers.

To host a website on the Internet, a person or company would need their own computer or server. Since not all companies had the budget or experience to do so, web hosting services began to offer the hosting of users' websites on their own servers, without the customer having to have the necessary infrastructure to operate the website. Website owners, also called webmasters, could create a website that would be hosted on the web hosting service's server and published on the web by the web hosting service. As the number of users on the World Wide Web increased, pressure increased for companies, both large and small, to have an online presence.

By 1995, companies like GeoCities, Angelfire and Tripod were offering free hosting. The most basic is small-scale web page and file hosting, where files can be uploaded via the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a web interface. Files are generally delivered to the Web as is or with minimal processing. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer this service for free to subscribers.

Individuals and organizations can also obtain website hosting from alternative service providers. Hosting a single page is usually sufficient for personal websites. Personal website hosting is usually free, ad-sponsored, or inexpensive. Hosting business websites often has a higher expense depending on the size and type of site.

Internet hosting services can run web servers. The scope of web hosting services varies widely. One's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, from a few sites to hundreds of websites. Generally, all domains can share a common set of server resources, such as RAM and CPU.

The features available with this type of service can be quite basic and not flexible in terms of software and updates. Resellers often sell shared web hosting, and web companies often have reseller accounts to provide hosting to customers. Also known as a virtual private server (VPS), it divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS are often allocated resources based on a relationship from one server to several VPS; however, virtualization can be done for several reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers.

Users can have root access to their own virtual space. Customers are sometimes responsible for applying patches and maintaining the server (unmanaged server) or the VPS provider may provide server administration tasks to the client (managed server). It's similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides the physical space that the server occupies and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of web hosting service.

In most cases, the colocation provider can provide little or no support directly to the customer's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access and storage facilities for the server. In most cases, in case of a crash, the customer would have their own administrator visit the on-site data center to make any hardware updates or changes. Previously, many colocation vendors accepted any system configuration for hosting, even those housed in desktop-type mini-towers, but most hosts now require rack-mount cabinets and standard system configurations. This is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered servers with load balancing and utility billing.

A website hosted in the cloud may be more reliable than alternatives since other computers in the cloud can compensate for fall of a single piece of hardware. In addition, local power outages or even natural disasters are less of a problem for sites hosted in cloud since cloud hosting also allows providers to charge users only for resources they consume rather than fixed fee for amount user expects to use or initial investment in hardware with fixed cost. Alternatively lack of centralization may give users less control over location of their data which could be problem for users with data security or privacy issues according GDPR guidelines. Cloud hosting users can request additional resources on demand for example only during periods of peak traffic and at same time transfer IT management to cloud hosting service have multiple servers hosting same content for better use of resources.

Clustered servers are perfect solution for highly available dedicated hosting or creating scalable web hosting solution. A cluster can separate web server from hosting capacity of base. Web servers typically use cluster hosting for their shared hosting plans as massive client management has multiple benefits. This form of distributed hosting is when cluster of servers acts like network and is made up several nodes.

A private server can be used host one or more websites from broadband connection normally suitable for consumers. Some ISPs block home servers by preventing incoming requests TCP port 80 user's connection and by refusing provide static IP addresses. Common way obtain reliable DNS hostname is create account with dynamic DNS service dynamic DNS service will automatically change IP address URL points when IP address changes. Server can also provide interface or control panel managing web server and installing scripts as...

Lily Smith
Lily Smith

Evil zombie expert. Award-winning bacon aficionado. Friendly internet scholar. Friendly pop culture guru. Hipster-friendly web buff.