Web Hosting FAQ – Part 3
What is full-service web hosting?
For companies who choose to offer the so called "Full-service" it generally mean that they made available to their customers the whole or full range of services extending from offering of additional web spaces, bandwidths, emails for a web site, etc. Other additional services may include web design services, web site content maintenance services and 24/7 toll free phone support,
What is shared (virtual) web hosting?
With virtual web hosting, basically, a web hosting subscriber will have his or her own IP address with the virtual hosting. The final website displayed on the web will not be any different from any other websites.In the case of shared hosting, this is how almost 98% of websites are currently hosted.
Basically, the web hosting provider will have more than one servers (super fast computers constantly connected to the web that run on server based OS applications such as Apache or IIS) that will run multiple websites belonging to many different webmaster. (they all shared one server)
Without the website is very popular with very high bandwidth requirement or that the number of web hit to the site is exceptionally high, it usually is the best way to host due primarily to the cost of hosting compared to dedicated hosting, co-location or DIY hosting.
What are PHP, SQL, Java, IP, etc.?
These are very commonly used web hosting acronyms referring to the various features such as database (SQL), programming scripts (PHP, Java), service providers address (IP), etc.
All these terms will usually be reflected within the technical specification of a web hosting plan, deciding their respective value and provision within a particular offered hosting plan.
What do the numbers listed under "space" and "transfer" means?
Space, as the definition goes, means how much data you can "stored". It is just like you are given a room of different sizes and each different size rooms will have different storage capacity. The technical terms for space is usually listed in megabytes (MB, millions of bytes).
A single letter takes up one byte. HTML files are usually small (about 25,000 bytes) but pictures and programs can get quite big. Your scripts, emails and stats will also take up space on your host.
Transfer on the other hand generally intends the amount of "data" visitors to a site can download before reaching the initially set monthly limit. (Based on the type of hosting plan you purchased). The main unit symbol for transfer is usually listed in gigabytes (billions of bytes).
Once the transfer limit is reached for the month, a hosting subscriber will immediately be informed by the hosting provider on the need to pay extra for additional transfer at higher rates.
An example, if an average visitor to your site views 3 HTML pages of 20 KB (thousands of bytes) each and 8 small embedded pictures of 10 KB each, and you get 500 visitors per day, you will require at least (3 * 20 + 8 * 10) * 500 * 30 = 2,100,000 KB = 2.1 GB of transfer per month.