A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. If you are interested in launching a commerical website then you must know the basics of web-hosting and its impact on websites.

First of all let’s talk about web-host. As we have discussed, A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to access your website. The computer that the web hosting company uses is typically just like the computer you have at home, the only difference being that it is set up to serve up web sites and is therefore called a “server”. A web host generally have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.
Some large web hosts own their own datacenter (collection of servers), some rent a server from a larger web hosting company and then resell the space under their own company name. In this case the web host will manage your account on the server, but they will be renting the actual web space from another much larger company.

KeyWords of Web-Hosting ::

• Server Type –> This is the type of server software that is running on the server. Windows 2000 server, Linux and Unix are common server types. If you have a basic website then the server type does not matter. If you have a more complex website that has database functions and serves up dynamic pages, then the server type will be more important.
• Disk Space –> This is the amount of actual space available to you for storing your website on the web server harddrive
• Bandwidth per Month –> This is a measure of how much website traffic is available to you. Every time somebody looks at your website, data has to be passed over the Internet from the web server where your site is hosted to the browser of the person looking at your site. Bandwidth is a measure of how much transfer is available. High traffic sites like Wikipedia.com for example have very high bandwidth requirements, but the average site does not
• Email Accounts –> How many email accounts you can have with the web hosting account.
• Server Side Scripting –> Web hosting plans can offer a myriad of confusing features. For the small website it is unlikely that you will ever need to know about any of them. If you are a web designer creating complex database driven sites then you will already know what you need. If after creating your site you have never heard of PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, SQL Server, mySQL – then chances are that you don’t need to worry about any of these things. If you plan to add a forum to your website then you will need a mySQL database. This is the most common database used with discussion boards like PHPbb, Vbulletin etc.