To Share or Not to Share?
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To Share or Not to Share a Web Host?
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When looking for a hosting solution for your web site you'll
discover you have the choice of shared or dedicated hosting.
This article will breifly explain the difference between them.
Shared hosting is what it says it is. Your web site shares a
server with other web sites. You don't have access to the other
web sites files, they don't have access to yours and you don't
share a domain name. What you do share is the machine and the
scripts that are pre-installed on it. Why would you do this?
Because it's cheaper.
As you can understand, the cost of setting up a server machine
is not inexpensive. Even relatively large web sites are only a
few hundred megabytes, so today's computers with multiple hard
drives are easily able to handle the space. There can be as many
as one or two hundred web sites on a shared server.
You'll find there are different platforms available in shared
hosting too. You will find you can have Unix/Linux or Windows
NT/2000 as your platform. You don't have to choose the platform
your PC is running. This has nothing to do with what the server
needs to operate on. Unix platforms are very stable and are
perfect if you have a site using mostly HTML pages, PHP or CGI.
If you are using scripting such as Active Server Pages, have
designed your web site using FrontPage, or need access to a
Microsoft Access or SQL Server database, you need a Windows
platform.
Shared hosting usually comes with a heap of extras and most are
included in the price. You can get email, auto-oresponders,
pre-installed scripts including counters and mail scripts,
password protected directories, your own cgi-bin, browser based
control panels, secure directories and more. Check the options
to see that you are getting what you need.
However, if you need complete control of your server, you need a
dedicated server. Obviously if you're not going to share the
server with anyone, it is going to be more expensive.
Dedicated servers are usually only required by experienced
developers. If you're not sure if you need a dedicated server,
then you probably only need shared hosting. If you're in doubt,
contact the company you are considering hosting with and ask
them about their products in detail.