Beginner’s Guide to Website Hosting – Web Hosting Guide

What is web hosting?

Web Hosting Guide – Web hosting are network type servers/computers that are designed for heavy work loads.  Designed to store a significant amount of data and handle that data quickly.  Additionally, web hosting servers are connected to the Internet using high-speed bandwidth.  Fiber optics is the typical lines used to transport data to the Internet.

Fiber optics are thin flexible fibers of glass or other transparent solids that are used to transmit data at lightening speeds.

Web hosting companies use servers to hold the computer files that creates websites as you see them.  Web hosting companies are typically dedicated to the web hosting business and have engineers employed that are constantly maintaining servers, creating a safer hosting environment and adding additional servers to handle the constant increase in hosting websites as more and more businesses heavily rely on the Internet.

Typically, web hosting companies rent computer storage space that “host” your website.  Those servers are offered in several different packages:

  1. Shared Hosting
  2. Virtual Private Server Hosting or V.P.S.
  3. Dedicated Server Hosting 
  4. Cloud Hosting
  5. Colocation Web Hosting
  6. Home Server Hosting 

Shared Hosting is one server that holds multiple websites.  The biggest advantage to this type of hosting environment is affordability.  Shared Hosting is the least expensive hosting plan.  Having said that, affordable hosting typically means cheap hosting.  Typically resulting in your website being hosted on a crowded server that delivers your web pages to visitors slowly.  Think about it, the more websites a hosting company can squeeze onto a server the fewer servers they have to buy saving the hosting company money.  This is the typical hosting plan chosen because most small website owners do not thoroughly understand the importance of quality hosting.  Exercise extreme caution with this type of hosting because, depending on the hosting company, can be very basic not restrict flexibility in terms of software and updates.

Virtual Private Server Hosting or commonly referred to as VPS hosting.  VPS hosting is similar to Shared Hosting, but the hosting company creates a sever that still holds multiple websites on the same server, but they hold fewer sites and commonly creates root access to your “virtual” space on the VPS.  The hosting company divides server resources into “virtual” where resources can be shared in a way that does not reflect the underlying hardware.  While this is a better alternative to Shared Hosting you might still have limitations with heavy traffic.  This type of hosting may be available as self hosting or managed hosting depending on the VPS packages offered by each particular web hosting company.

Dedicated Server Hosting is the best hosting option available.  Having said that, it is the most expensive type of hosting.  With a Dedicated Server Hosting package your website will set on a “dedicated” server and share with no other website.  It increases security, helps your website to perform at its highest level and will typically result in better website rankings.  The fewer websites that are on a sever means less traffic to that particular server reducing load on the server and bandwidth maximizing the performance of your website when it is called upon for service.

Cloud Hosting is a newer type of hosting environment that offers many attractive benefits.  Your website is shared on multiple servers that are designed to handle high traffic efficiently while increasing security and performance.

Colocation Web Hosting is pretty simple to understand.  It resembles a dedicated server hosting service, but the user or customer actually owns the “colo” server.  The hosting company provides physical space, electrical power, access to the Internet and is responsible for the server.  This type of hosting service might be self-managed hosting or managed hosting depending on the particular hosting company.  This is an expensive option and not one that a lot of large hosting companies will provide.

Home Server Hosting is a single server placed in a home or business environment that is used to host one or multiple websites depending on the size of the server.  This is not an attractive option because it inherits multiple risks including everything from lack of professional knowledge, proper power backup service, server backups, lack of disaster planning or recovery to slow Internet access.  This is the least expensive, but will probably be disastrous.  Hosting is a specialty and even the professionals have trouble getting it right at times.

KickAss.Domains offers all types of hosting plans and services to assure that we have hosting solutions for just about every need to better serve our customers.

What are the most important factors surrounding web hosting services?

That is simple: (1) Security (2) Speed (3) Reliability (4) Support

  1. Security – website security is a critical part of website ownership and hosting.  Spammers and hackers are constantly surfing the web seeking news or website with weak security to hack and use that server for their own use, typically illegal use, which could possibly create legal obstacles for the website owner.  Security is ranked as “critical” website hosting service.
  2. Speed – speed is obviously an important web hosting feature.  Nobody likes to wait for a website to load including the major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex.  Fast loading websites will rank higher in search engine search results.  It is a major factor in SEO.  If you want happy website visitors and high rankings with the major search engines plan on buying a fast and reliable hosting package.
  3. Reliability – pick a web hosting company that has a high online up-time.  Most professional hosting companies have a 99% up-time guarantee.  If they don’t have a high up-time factor find another hosting company fast.  The last bad experience you want is a hosting company that has your website down a significant amount of time.
  4. Support – this is an easy feature to understand about website hosting services.  You want a web hosting company that is available 24/7/365.  If your site goes down or needs any type of attention you want to resolve it quickly.

Promotional Fact: KickAss.Domains offers all of these features.  We have the best security, the fastest speeds that are reliable and with 24/7/365 support.

What is the difference between self-serve web hosting, managed and fully managed web hosting?

While terminology is sometimes overwhelming, many times it makes sense once you think about it.  Self managed web hosting means you are responsible for the server, its security, its backups and more.  This type of service is most commonly used by web designers who understand web hosting.  This is not a service that most companies will want unless they have a qualified IT department.

Managed web hosting means the web hosting company accepts certain responsibilities.  These responsibilities may vary so visit with your prospective web hosting company to assure that you thoroughly understand what your responsibilities are and what their responsibilities are.  It is not uncommon for this to not end well as many website owners typically do not thoroughly understand what they are buying or subscribing to.  Just be cautious and understand what it is that you are signing up for.

Fully manged is just what is says.  The web hosting company is providing “fully” managed services.  Meaning they are typically responsible for all aspects of managed your server.

Whether you choose self-managed, managed or fully managed web hosting services, these services are available to only VPS or Dedicated Web Hosting Services.  Share hosting comes as fully managed.

Does web hosting services affect a websites search engine ranking?

Web hosting has a serious impact on your search engine rankings.  It is critical that you choose a secure environment to host your website that is fast.

Websites that lack security can have phishing files, used as a spam site or a multitude of negative issues that will cause the search engine to remove a site from their index.  Tight website security and SSL Certificates will help assure that you and your visitors have a successful online experience.

Additionally, slow load times will cause the major search engines to offer other competitors websites rather than your because they have a faster load time.  Slow websites will not rank well in search engine search results because consumers are not patient and do not like to wait for a website.  Therefore, knowing that, the major search engines will not refer their visitors to sites that load slow.  In fact, the faster your website loads, the higher you will rank in search results.

Promotional facts: KickAss.Domains offers Kick Ass hosting services of all types featuring:


If your website has special demands and needs we can custom design a web hosting plan that will meet and even exceed your needs.  Additional products offer are CDN’s (Content Delivery Network) which is an excellent option for website owners that need fast load times and enhanced security.

We hope our Web Hosting Guide is helpful.  Please feel free to make comments or recommendations by emailing info@STLMedia.Agency.  Our Web Hosting Guide will continue to expand and will soon be available in PDF.


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