So Many Hosting Choices – so Little Time
It was almost 13 years ago whenever I first bought my domain name and decided to bring my business onto the Internet. Most of you that have only been around for a little while on the Internet realize that that is in literal eternity in Internet years. Although things were a little bit different during those days, there were many ways that they were the same.
You are probably aware that it is possible for you to buy a domain name from any one of dozens of different registrars. During the time whenever I bought my first domain, however, I had to pay $35 per year and I did so to a company known as networksolutions. You can now buy a domain name for well under $10 a year, but I did not have that choice at the time. Because I now owned the domain name, I needed a quick course in how to host the domain.
The first type of hosting that I started out on was a shared server and I paid about $20 a month in order to have the service. A shared server is the most common type, as it allows many people to be physically located on the same server but yet still hold their own space that is separate from the others. Shared servers are not as expensive anymore, and you can usually find a good shared host for under five dollars a month.
My business eventually grew and the traffic that I was receiving to my website grew along with it. I needed a more robust server in order to handle the traffic that was coming my way and for this, I decided on a VPS. This stands for virtual Private server, and it is simply a way of saying that you are still sharing a server but that you will have a much larger chunk of the resources that are available. Most of these types of servers are only split among six or eight people.
As I added additional domains over the course of time, I also continued to purchase additional hosting as well. Most of the time, I would buy a shared server for my new domain name and then move it over to a virtual Private server as the domain began to grow and experience additional traffic. There were also times whenever I would move multiple domain names over one to the same virtual Private server, but I always made sure that each domain had its own IP address.
Eventually, my business grew to the point where I could get a dedicated server and host many of my busier websites on it. Having a dedicated server opened me up to even more traffic as I was able to use all of the server resources for my business.
Is it going to take you a little bit of time to understand Web hosting? Of course it is, but the time that you spend understanding hosting and choosing a proper web host is going to enhance your business in a number of different ways. Don’t rush through this decision, as it is going to be a decision that you need to live with for the long term.
