Every single website is hosted on a web server. A web server enables every document, photo and video that makes up a website to be displayed to the world.
A server can be compared with a computer on your desktop. The primary difference is that the server is far more powerful and has greater bandwidth to the internet. In addition, your server is located in a data centre which protects your server – keeping it at the right temperature and ensuring it is safe from harm.
What Kind of Website Hosting do you need?
The particular type of website hosting you need depends on the type of website you operate. If you operate a website that does not have huge amounts of traffic or numerous files, then you may wish to consider shared web hosting.
What is Shared Web Hosting?
Shared website hosting means that there are multiple websites on one server. When you have a shared server you are assigned a specific portion of that server, which is yours to do whatever you please with. You make up a part of the entire server, owing a particular section.
What Happens if you have a Bigger Website?
If you have a bigger website that demands more bandwidth and needs more hard drive space then you should consider a Virtual Private Server.
A Virtual Private Server simply assigns you with much more space on your own server – so rather than being assigned with a small portion – as with shared website hosting, you are assigned with a bigger chunk that is shared by fewer websites. Here you can do whatever you need to do for your website and for your business, as that entire space is allocated specifically to you.
Another option is a dedicated server, which is an even bigger amount of space assigned to a single website. This dedicated server comes with complete 24-hour protection and is ideal for huge websites hosting plenty of pages, images, videos and other documentation. This sort of website also has huge amounts of traffic every single day.
Last but not least is co-location. Co-location is the same as a dedicated server, except you send your server to a secure data centre. Here, the server is then assigned with specific protection to ensure it is always safe and secure. In most cases a security team is also on hand to protect your server from external harm.