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What is web hosting?

A web hosting is what allows your website to be accessed through the Internet. Web hosting companies own servers that provide space on the web and connectivity for their clients. In order to have your website visible to users on the Internet you must have your site hosted on a server. The scopes of hosting services vary widely. The most basic is webpage and small-scale file hosting traditionally allows files to be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with little processing. Personal web site hosting can be free, advertisement-sponsored, or cheap. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense.
In general, single page hosting is only sufficient for personal web pages, not always then. More pages are necessary for most business sites and many personal sites. A more complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like blogs or forums and content management. For e-commerce (sites that sell services or products on the web), SSL (a secure sockets layer) is also required.
Some hosting companies may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Certain hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce). They are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company. When choosing a hosting company it is important to find one that suits the needs of you and your website. It is also important to find a company that can offer support whenever and as often as you need it. Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment.

Types of hosting
Hosting services limited to the Web:

• Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and can be quite limited in its capabilities.
• Shared web hosting service: 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.
• 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.
• Virtual Dedicated Server: dividing a server into virtual servers, where 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. This is also known as a virtual private server or VPS.
• 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.
• 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.
• Home server: usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more websites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PC's. Some ISP's actively attempt to block these servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses.

Obtaining hosting

Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan. 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. Webhosting clients may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media.

How to get your website hosted now.

To register the domain name that you would like for your website, first enter your top choice for your name in the search box above. URLniche will let you know if that name is available or if it has already been registered. Do not include any spaces or punctuation other than a hyphen in your domain name. If your choice of name is already taken, URLniche will offer suggestions on other domain names or you can search for other choices. We recommend .com domain names as the primary URL for your site, however it can be advantageous to also have the same name registered as .org or .net as well.

If your domain name choice is available, URL will automatically select that domain for one year. Click on the red continue button and URLniche will take you to a domain registration form. If you are a new customer, select the option “I would like to create a new account” and fill in your information. If the domain registration is for a business fill in the Company Name and check the box below it to confirm that the domain name will be owned by the company, not the individual registering it. You may click on the “Save my registration info and shop for more domains” if you would like to buy more domain names at this time, if not, click “Continue”. Double check your information to be sure your domain name is registered properly and click on “Continue” once more.