What are some of the words I need to know when I choose a web host?

What are some of the words I need to know when I choose a web host?

Disk or storage space - Because your site is a collection of files offered on the Internet for viewing, they must be stored somewhere for retrieval and take up space. Each Web server has a limited amount of hard drive memory to divide and offer hosting customers. Typically this space is divided by different package levels so that the more you pay, the more space you are allowed to store photos, web pages, videos and whatever other files you want on the hard drive Web server. If your site becomes larger than the space given to you, you will need to purchase more disk space from the host.

Bandwidth or data transfer - Each time you visit a website and view a page, you transfer a copy of the files that make up this page on the Internet from the Web server on your computer. If the page you are viewing consists of an HTML file that is 3KB in size and three images of 47KB, 100KB and 250KB, then you just used 400KB of bandwidth or data transfer, for that is the total amount of data you downloaded from the Web server to view this page. Bandwidth is a commodity like disk space that the host should purchase from its Internet service provider, so it is too divided and offered to customers in specific amounts. Bandwidth amounts are usually measured in gigabytes (GB), because while only a copy of your files must be stored on the server, thousands or even millions of copies can be downloaded to be viewed. If your site is accessed over time the amount of bandwidth you are allowed can handle, your site can be turned off until the next billing period starts, or you can just be charged for the excess amount used, according to the policies of your home. You can always buy more bandwidth as traffic increases on your site.

Uptime - In an ideal world, every Web server is operational and providing your web pages in the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week forever. However, web servers are computers, and like any other computer, things are going to make them fail, or they get old and out of date and require maintenance and repair. When a web host gives you a 99% uptime guarantee, they say that the web server will be operational for 99% of the billing period. If they fail to meet this guarantee, most web hosts will refund some of your money depending on the amount of excess downtime they experienced.

Traffic statistics - Website traffic statistics programs try to track visitors to your website. They can track how many times your site has been visited, how many visitors were unique and how many came back more than once, which pages are most popular, where visitors came to your site from, what the terms of research they used in search engines, and many other types of information that may be useful in marketing your site to a target audience. These statistics can be displayed in tables, charts and tables per hour, day, week, month or year. Some statistics programs are better than others and offer several types of data, better displays, easier navigation and other useful features. Most web hosts now offer some sort of traffic statistics software with their hosting packages.

CGI Scripts - Many web hosts offer a variety of free CGI scripts with their packages. These are things like hit counters, guest books, form mail programs, message boards, and other programs that allow your website to perform commonly desired functions. You can use those in your host provides you or you can download and run custom CGI scripts written by you or someone else to perform various tasks such as a survey of the information or customer processing to produce an automatic quote. Most CGI scripts are written in common programming languages ​​such as Perl, PHP or ASP.

You could spend a lot of time trying to learn everything there is to know about web hosting, but if you've read this far, then you should be armed with the basic knowledge you need to understand what the various web hosts offer. Your next task is to understand what you need and go out and find a host that wants to give it to you at a great price!