Complete Beginner’s Guide – Web Hosting Introduction

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What is Web Hosting for Beginners

What is web hosting?” is a common question in today’s electronic world. Simply put, a service that helps you publish a website on the internet is termed web hosting.

A follow-up to that is “do I need hosting for my website?” – an easy and fast answer to it is “yes”. You do need hosting platforms to power your web site’s presence on a large scale.

Exabytes Malaysia has been in the business of managed hosting for twenty years and has helped thousands of entities create and host a business website.

Whether you’re a young entrepreneur or an established business, a jimat hosting plan from us can ensure your website is secure and promoted.

What Is Hosting and Domain?

Every website needs space on a web server along with some internet bandwidth and data transfer for it to be available on the internet – this is called “hosting”.

Like we acquire a shop and then give it name, starting an online business also needs a name which can be used on the internet i.e. a website name. This is called a “domain” in technical language.

Do I Need Hosting for My Website?

Yes! Choosing to host a website with one of the best web service providers is essential for your website to be easily viewed over the internet without any glitches.

A dependable hosting platform would have a robust infrastructure like superfast connectivity, reliable servers, and excellent technical support.

Buying an entire server, paying for its maintenance and support it, purchasing a data center like internet connection – all of this is prohibitively expensive.

Additionally – server support, maintenance, upgrades, security updates etc. are highly complex and technical in nature. It is a full-time job of trained professionals with certified credentials.

Exabytes provides 24 x 7 x 365 technical support to ensure customers are always taken care of.

What Are the 4 Types of Web Hosting

  • Shared hosting
  • Dedicated web hosting
  • Managed web hosting
  • Business web hosting

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is the type of hosting where a website shares its space on the web server with other domains.

The cost of the server is shared by multiple users making it the most affordable and popular solution for personal users and small businesses as companies to set up blog, e-commerce, and other advanced applications.

However, the website performance is dependent on the activities of other websites too that’s present on the server.

Dedicated web hosting

Dedicated hosting is the type of hosting where only one website is hosted on a given server.

This allows for all benefits like speed, disk space, FTP, and performance being dependent only on the performance of one’s own website.

Related topic: What is Dedicated Server Hosting

Managed web hosting

Managed hosting is preferred as the type of hosting when the website requires dedicated server but has no advanced technical expertise of servers and requires assistance.

The hosting service provider looks into all technical aspects of server support enabling the website owners to focus on other areas of the business.

Business web hosting

Business hosting acts as the perfect balance between shared hosting (an inexpensive way) and Virtual Private Server (powerful yet very expensive).

Business hosting combines the power of a VPS with the ease of shared hosting. It allows individuals and organizations to make their websites accessible online with proper hosting to maintain and protect it.

What Type of Web Hosting to Choose?

There are some options for free web hosting available. However, one must bear in mind that such providers impose several limitations on the website design, and web hosting capacity.

One can at the most put up a basic online store and some very simple website pages only.

Some free web hosting platforms offer a free domain to attract people who have online business ideas but are not fully aware of how to start business website hosting.

Creation of multiple email addresses, e-commerce websites with online payment options etc. just cannot work with free web hosting. There is very little or no control on the hosting.

Websites that are bigger and have larger hosting needs can go for dedicated servers.

And if incase the website technical team has lesser knowledge of advanced aspects of servers or is short on time, it is ideal to go for managed web hosting support.

Factors to Consider When Choosing Web Hosting Provider

Disk space refers to storage space allocated to a given website to store the web site files, text, images, audio, etc. files that’s essential for the website.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of traffic that is permitted to access and leave the website.

Access refers to each time a visitor types the website name in their browser and leave stands for every time a visitor receives something from the website, be it seeing a photo, listening to an audio clip or downloading a file.

FTP refers to File Transfer Protocol that helps you transfer website files from the computer to a web hosting server, or vice versa.

This allows to upload finished website files (including images and other multimedia files) from the computer to service provider’s server and download the files from web hosting server back to computer.

FTP access should be unrestricted and available 24×7.

Email hosting support is often provided as a part of the web hosting services.  With webmail access, POP3 and SMTP access also must be provided to enable using emails using the mobile devices.

Webhosting providers essentially provide telephone and email support.

Most providers guarantee 99% uptime, and if there are any issues, technical support must be available to instantly resolve the issue with the downtime being minimal.

Some support measures that may help include 24/7 server and network monitoring, redundant hardware and network configurations, and onsite backup power supply.

Good web hosting services come at a price, however choosing the web hosting provider that effectively manages all your web hosting requirements is essential.

It is important to check for all the services provided with the technical support.

Follow the Step-by-step Guide for Creating a Business Website

  1. Frame the primary purpose of website, your offerings and how you want to be found.
  2. Choose the domain name relevant to the business offerings. Avoid typos in the domain name and make it easy for brand recall.
  3. Choose a web hosting platform
  4. Build your pages with relevant content, keywords, links and images.
  5. Set up the payment gateway with all feasible options.
  6. Run a test drive for the website, if successful, make the website live
  7. Regularly maintain the site, check for dead-links. Your site is your online storefront, and it needs to be in good shape. Once a month, check on what pages are doing well—driving sales, getting email list sign ups, etc.—and which are causing people to bounce.

Exabytes offers a wide array of hosting plans and options to suit every pocket, unlimited email addresses, customizable website designs, infinite choices of features, add-ons and many more.

In a nutshell – free hosting may work for those who are doing something for fun and as a hobby. Serious business and professional with goals and targets need business hosting services.

If you are wondering how to start a small business in Malaysia, Exabytes is the place to be at. That’s why we will be glad if you trust us with handling your web presence.

With a broad range of hosting platforms including a free domain name with certain jimat hosting plans. Contact us today for more details.

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