FAQ
Web hosting is a data storage service that keeps websites running for users. Every online site has a hosted server, and almost everyone uses web hosting to manage that store. However, not all web hosts offer the same level of quality. Uptime, data rate, and the number of transfers are the most important measures of a host’s success. You can always pay for data transfers in larger quantities and faster. Most web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space at speeds, which is great for small and medium businesses or individuals. For businesses with demanding websites, they need to find a more advanced web host.
A shared web hosting service is a contract under which each user receives a certain share of the total available resources. Multiple domains are hosted on the same server, which means that server options are shared across multiple domains. This means that these websites will not perform as powerfully as websites with a dedicated server that applies all its resources to only one site. If requests are to multiple websites on the same server at the same time, the server will only be able to transmit a large amount of information at the same time. For sites with low bandwidth, you usually don’t experience delays, but for heavier sites, the delays can be significant.
The domain name is the actual name of the website, and each website has a domain name. To obtain it, you must purchase it through a domain registrar. Domains can cost anywhere from a few dollars a year to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, depending on the contract and the popularity of the domain. Each domain name actually points to an Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is a series of numbers. Because most people don’t remember 10 numbers in perfect order, domain names serve as easy-to-remember aliases for visitors.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that is accessed while viewing a website. Every time a user views a website, data is transferred, and the measurement of that transfer is bandwidth. In general, images, audio files and video files are higher in bandwidth than text. That means that if you have a more burdensome website in terms of bandwidth – if you have lots of video or streaming audio, for example – you have a higher bandwidth requirement than someone with a simple text-only website, or someone with only a few low-resolution images. Some web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, and some place a cap on it.
Disk space refers to the total space available for a user to store files on at any time. Files may be any type – HTML, images, videos – and at any single given time, the total file size may not exceed the disk space. How much disk space you need is dependent on what type of media and interactions you’ll be hosting through your site. Your email account’s storage is also counted in disk space, so if you have large files that will sit in the account, that will boost your disk space needs. Remember that although you might not need much space now, you want wiggle room to expand and grow in the future, without switching hosts.
You can find out how many people visited your site through a number of different third party resources, such as Google Analytics or StatCounter. Some hosts provide easy ways to incorporate these tools into your website to start tracking, but some don’t give you any help in setup at all. It’s important that businesses install some sort of traffic counting tool on every page of a site and regularly decipher the data to make improvements to marketing and sales plans. For personal websites, traffic counters are merely tools of curiosity, but the numbers certainly are fun to keep an eye on!
When you purchase an account with a web host, one of the services you receive is a certain number of dedicated email accounts for any domain hosted on that account. Some web hosts give you one email account, or 20 email accounts, or unlimited email accounts. Those email accounts are managed from the control panel of the web host and you can set up email accounts, change their passwords, and set up email forwarders, all from that control panel. You can also set up a dedicated email account to send from a web-based email service like gMail or an offline service like Outlook.
This is an abbreviation for Secure Sockets Layer. This is a common protocol used to communicate information securely online. This protocol provides a safe path that runs between two Internet-connected machines or two machines on the same internal network. It is an extremely handy tool used by web browsers who need to connect securely to a web server, given the wild insecurity inherent in the Internet. SSL usually operates and sets up a secure session with little or no interaction from the person actually visiting the web site. You may notice the browser displaying a padlock or the address showing a padlock and a green bar – those are the hallmarks of SSL doing its magic.
Unfortunately, the short answer is that without adding in some level of protection, your site is probably not protected from hackers. Some web hosts give you that added protection, and some don’t. For example, some web hosts provide SiteLock Security, which works hard to block hackers and spammers. If you are using WordPress, your site is inherently more secure than many, but it is still extremely important to install plugins focused on boosting security.
You can – and should! – back up your website regularly. From the control panel, there should be a Backup function, and with one click, you can save all of your files, if they are under 500 MB. If they total more than that, you will need to save your databases in partitions. To back up your website, is also as simple as through FTP simply dragging your PUBLIC.html folder over to your computer and copying the files in that way. You will not back up your email accounts like that, though. If you have doubts about your web host’s security, you can set up an email forwarder and have everything duplicated in an online email service like gMail or an offline one like Outlook.
We understand that some web hosting companies might want to remove their company’s listing from Host Lecture for different reasons. However, we only remove listings from Host Lecture if the hosting company has been permanently closed.
We do recommend that you make sure that your company information is up to date. In order to claim and edit your company profile please visit: https://hostlecture.com/
If your company has been permanently closed and you want to remove it from the site, please contact us with a document that proves that and we will delete it from the site.
