The only thing you need to get online and surf through the literally millions of websites on the net is an internet connection. These sites are available around the clock, every day of the year because these websites reside on computers which are constantly on and connected to the net ” something most computers are not designed to do. If you want to get your website up and running, then you’ll need to sign up for web hosting services.
There are many different types of web hosting service plans to choose from; while there are free hosting companies, these are not recommended (they tend to be relatively unreliable and are notorious for disappearing overnight). Instead of these free services, you should use commercially available web hosting services ” most of these services offer low cost web hosting services aimed at beginners, but there are plenty of more advanced options such as dedicated server hosting.
Dedicated web hosting plans are much the same as a shared hosting plan, with one important difference: the site is held on its own server. Do you need dedicated hosting? Look at the following statements ” if all of them are true, then dedicated hosting is for you.
You’re Looking For High Security For Your Site
It’s important to keep your site well protected. This consists of measures like using strong passwords to keep your databases safe from hackers and using the latest and most secure versions of all of the web applications in use on your site. However, when you use shared hosting, even the best security measures can’t entirely protect you from attacks. An attack against another site on the same server where your website is hosted could mean that your site feels some of the effects of the attack. When your site is hosted on a dedicated server, your site is the only one which needs to implement security measures, since it is the only site on the server.
You Want The Highest Performance For Your Site’s Visitors
When traffic accumulates in a single website, the performance isnt affected all that much if the server specifications are high. But once you have lots of websites stored in that server and all the websites get large amounts of traffic, all visitors will suffer from slower speeds. This may not be very noticeable for simple page loading, but if your site has lots of multimedia content, slowdowns can occur and may frustrate your visitors. With a dedicated server, all of the servers resources are for your website ensuring maximum performance even during heavy traffic periods.
You Need Total Control Over Your Web Server
Shared hosting plans do give you control over uploading content to your site, installing applications and setting privileges for your content and applications. However, if you need some more extensive control over server-side function like changing VPS settings and allowing root privileges for several people to maintain your site, then a dedicated server hosting plan is the way to go. With business-oriented sites, a dedicated server is almost always a better choice, since you’ll want to have complete control over how your site and your server are set up and maintained.
If not all of these three conditions hold true for your website, then you can probably keep using shared hosting for the time being. Shared hosting is great for your site when it’s just getting started but as your site and your online business presence grow, you’ll need the control, the performance and the security which a dedicated server provides.