Introduction to Web Hosting- Common Questions & Answers

If you would like an online presence but are not sure where to start, you are in the just the place to find the answers you need. The goal of Southern Web Host is to help you from start to finish and we are happy to answer any questions you may have regarding your web site project.

Web Hosting is the service of providing storage space for your website files and other features such as email and cgi scripts, etc., on an Internet-connected, storage heavy computer, (often referred to as a web server). These computers are owned and maintained by a company that specializes in providing this service, otherwise known as a “Web Host”. Web Hosting Companies invest in highly secure, fault-resistant facilities, which allows them to provide much quicker and more secure connections to the Internet than individuals.

This is where Southern Web Host comes in. Our commercial Web servers are housed in a high speed, secure facility which is connected to the Internet through 14 Gigabit Ethernet Links from six separate backbone providers, who each run fiber optic cable into the data center through two separate entry points. In the event of a failure with one provider, we’ll still be operating and connected through our other upstream provider. There are very few data centers in the world that can boast this level of bandwidth, redundancy and speed.

The first step to creating your website is registering your domain name which is basically your “Internet address”, just like your house has a street address, your domain name has an Internet address. Generally, domain names look like www.yourdomain.com but there are a large number of suffixes available as well. Every domain name is assigned to an IP address which works like a phone number. An IP address looks something like this: 123.456.789.0.

When someone types your domain name into their browser, the request or “call” to the domain name is sent to a group of servers that store a master list of domain names. When the request or “call” comes in for a domain name, these servers redirect the request to a Domain Name Server (DNS) which is responsible for administering all calls to that address. Your Web Host’s Domain Name Server stores the IP addresses of all of the sites located on their Web servers and when the DNS receives a call to an address on a server, it then sends an acknowledgement to the master list server which then directs the request or “call” to the Web Host’s server that the website is located on.

There are many factors in determining the best Web Hosting provider for your needs, some of which include:

Web servers run websites and all server software runs on a computer program which is referred to as the “Operating System” or (OS). Not all software is compatible with all Operating Systems so this is something that you will need to consider when choosing a Web Host for your website.

There are essentially three competing versions of operating systems, Unix, Linux and Windows. There are also a lot of strong opinions when it comes to which operating system is the best for websites. The bottom line is that it really depends on your website and what you will be doing with it. While Windows dominates the personal computer user’s operating system, UNIX has always dominated the Internet.

Many experts prefer Unix/Linux over Windows NT because they provide more flexibility, security and control than Windows. Below is a brief overview of each:

Once you have found a Web Host for your website you will then need to choose the best hosting plan for your website. We suggest making a checklist of features you will need such as:

Standard Features that most web hosting companies provide include:

A control panel allows you to control your web hosting account and the features included in your hosting plan .

Disk space is the amount of space provided to the website owner for storing their web site’s files online. (html files, images, cgi scripts, etc). To determine how much disk space you will need for your website, you will first need to determine the average size and number of web pages in your website.

A basic web page with limited graphics is usually around 20kb. If your web page contains a large number of heavy graphics, you can estimate the size at up to 50 kb. To calculate the amount of space you will need for your website simply multiply the numbers of pages in your site by the average file size of your web pages.

Example: A website contains 25 pages of average size (20 kb) and 10 pages of heavy size (50kb). The site would therefore require approximately 0.5 MB (megs) of disk space for her web pages.

Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. The movement of information from one location to another is often referred to as “data transfer”.

Beware of companies that offer “unlimited” bandwidth or data transfer because there is no such thing. It is merely a marketing trick to try to get new customers. The majority of websites require a very small amount of bandwidth and the web hosting companies that advertise “unlimited” bandwidth or disk space are banking on that fact. When in doubt, refer to the web hosting company’s, Terms of Service where you will most likely find an explanation of what “unlimited” really means to them and what they will charge if you go over what they consider to be “unlimited”.

Web hosting includes a specified number of e-mail accounts (also known as POP3) which is an email address such as yourname@yourwebsite.com.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - Without getting too technical, CGI is a way to transfer information from a web server and a CGI program. A CGI program is a program designed to accept and return data that conforms to the CGI specifications. These programs can be written in many different programming languages including, Perl, Java, C or Visual Basic.

The most common use for CGI Programs (or more often referred to as CGI Scripts), is to allow the website owner a dynamic way to interact with their visitors.

A CGI-Bin is a special directory on a Web server (that must be set up by a system administrator due to directory permissions), where CGI programs are stored.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a way of transferring files over the Internet from one computer to another. For instance, when you create a webpage (html page) on your computer, you will need to upload (or put) the file on the Web server in order for it to be accessible via the Web.

In order to upload these files you will need a FTP Program. Basically, you run the FTP program on your computer and the program connects to the remote Web server over the Internet. You can then choose the files on your computer that you want to upload and the program will transfer them. We highly recommend using CUTE FTP or WS_FTP if you are going to use a stand alone program. They are very easy to use and inexpensive. However, if you are using a program such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, FTP is included in those programs so you will not need to go out and purchase an additional program if you are planning on using an editor such as those.

FrontPage is a very common web site design tool developed by Microsoft which allows users to build a website without a lot of design knowledge or experience. In order to use this software, your host must provide server extensions

Hopefully we have answered some of the questions you may have had! If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us!