What exactly is a web host? This question is typical of someone who is new to or just getting into the process of building a website. Put simply, a web host is basically a neighborhood of web sites stored on a server. Period.
To elaborate a little more, let me go into more detail. These servers are actually owned by the web hosting companies we seek out for housing our websites. Each website has it's own address (referred to as URL) to help individuals like you and I arrive at the destination to find what we need.
Whether it be products, information, music, etc there is no limit to what can be found online but that's an entirely different story.
When you host a website with someone it can be stored anywhere. For instance, a website that was built by someone in Europe could have the site hosted on a server in Miami, FL. That's what's so amazing about the internet because it offers so much flexibility as to where you want to your website stored. You are not limited to your home country.
You can look at website hosting the same way as paying rent for an apartment. Essentially, you are renting out space to keep your website in order for people to view it. Just like apartments there are rules to abide by. This could be restrictions as to the types of programs you run on the servers. Certain programs use up a considerable amount of resources causing the servers to get bogged down.
If the host provider company traces it back to you, they'll ask you to remove it and never use it again. What happens is the resources being used up can cause problems with other websites stored on the servers. This can lead to sites being unavailable or people getting that "website is busy" message when trying to visit the url.
If this happens too much people may just decide to move their website to another host provider. Web hosts want to avoid this inconvenience as much as possible. With today's technology many of the servers are very stable and usually don't run into this problem like they did years ago.
Another thing to be aware of is the type of website you plan to publish. By this I'm referring to the type of material you'll be displaying on it. If your site happens to include things of a pornographic nature, you may just find your website evicted from their servers. Please be sure to read the host provider's terms of use very carefully before uploading web sites of that nature to the servers.
If you are new to website hosting, it can be overwhelming as to whether or not you are getting the right plan or package deal. Don't worry because a lot of the features you need come with the cheapest plan offered. The other features are more suited to individuals that are more advanced when it comes to website building.
As your experience grows and you become more proficient at building and running a website, you can always upgrade to another package when needed.
Larry Washington is the webmaster and publisher of GR8 Website Hosting where he provides great information on finding an ecommerce web site host. You can browse his website to get more information at http://gr8-website-hosting.com. The article above can be republished only if this entire resource box is left intact along with the original hyperlinks.
