What is web hosting?

Twenty five years ago, very few people had heard about the Internet. Today however, almost every country has entered the Internet era and even children are learning to browse the Internet or send emails. Anyone who has browsed the Internet knows that some websites are very appealing and are able to hold our attention. They may have attractive pictures, fun games, interesting information, mesmerizing videos or items that we can buy. Some of us spend hours just browsing from page to page doing shopping or playing games on the Internet. Many of us wonder how these websites are created and where all this information is stored, updated and retrieved on demand.

How does the Internet work?

The Internet is a vast collection of computers that are connected to each other. These computers are said to be “networked” and may be imagined as a global electronic spider web. Many of the computers connected to the Internet may not have the capabilities to create websites. Only computers with special programs (software) and hardware capabilities (equipment) can enable us to create websites. For individuals like us, buying all that equipment and software that is required for creating and maintaining websites may not be very feasible. People (or companies) who wish to have online websites without the hassles associated with maintaining and securing it can now avail the services of companies that will host our websites and perform the necessary maintenance procedures to keep them updated and secure.

A computer that stores information and programs which may also be shared with other users on the Internet is called a server. A server may accept incoming connections and serve the people at the other end as part of your business. Examples of businesses with servers for sending and receiving information are travel agencies, online Wikipedia, etc. If this server is also used to store information about websites for others, then it is said to be “hosting’ websites. Not every computer can host websites. Special equipment and software that runs on this equipment may be required to host safe and powerful websites. A computer that maintains information for multiple websites is said to be ‘webhosting”.

Why do we need webhosting?

Most of us are aware of the thousands of malicious programs created by net criminals that introduce viruses that could seriously damage our computers. Well, these criminals are getting more devious and every day. If we do not keep up with the latest anti-virus strategies, our computer could lose all its data (“gets hosed” in computer terminology) including valuable programs and databases with customer information.

Websites get more complicated and expensive if we operate a business using our website. There are many ways to compromise the safety of our information as well as that of our customers. Identity theft is a growing problem that can only be avoided by protecting all our information from the criminals prowling the internet for social security numbers and credit card information.

Other challenges that affect online businesses are bottlenecks (too many customers trying to connect or browse on the same site), congestion (crowded network), backup servers that increase reliability when one server crashes, and the ability to increase our capabilities as business increases (scalability).

The best method of creating and maintaining websites is to use webhosting sites such as http://www.lunarpages.com which guarantee safety and control of our business data so that we can just worry about our business and what we are good at, instead of wasting time worrying about website security or congestion.

The advantages of webhosting include:

1. High powered servers for fast and efficient web pages
2. Frequent backups to avoid loss of data
3. Large amounts of storage, sometimes unlimited in size
4. Large transfer allowances
5. Unlimited domains to choose from (sometimes free domain for life)
6. Email accounts and Email forwarding
7. Efficient databases
8. User friendly control panels to enable easy hosting facilities such as search engines, forums, blogs, shopping cart, etc.
9. Reliability using backups so that the user will never have a clue if the website went down while s/he was browsing.
10. Customer service to help you immediately with any website issues.