If you have a website or want a website, you need a website hosting company. The good news is that there are tones to choose from. The bad news is that you need to learn a bit about web hosting to choose the right one for you. We will cover this in this article to help you choose the right web host for your business/personal website.

What is a web hosting company?

Web hosts provide services that allow you to store the information that makes up your website. The web host stores your website information on a web server. Whenever you type a web address into your browser, the browser requests information about your website from the web host's server, and the browser then displays it on your screen. In general, if you don't have your own web host or server, you won't have a website. Some ISPs (ISPs) provide web space, but this is not the type of web hosting we will be discussing.

Web Hosting South Africa

Hosting plan type

The next thing you need to know is that there are different types of hosting available to you. There are virtual/shared hosting. This means that the web hosting company is hosting more than one account on this server. There is also a dedicated one, which basically means you get your own server. Another type (which is not as common as the first two) are VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and they are "virtual" servers on actual servers and users can add various modules to their servers. Users can also set how much CPU or memory module usage is convenient. Most users usually only need shared hosting unless you have a large website with over 5,000 daily visitors and a large script. In this case, you need dedicated hosting.
Operating system type

There are three types of server operating systems. There is Linux, Unix and of course Windows. Just because your computer is a computer doesn't mean you should choose Windows web hosting. The operating system you use on your desktop has nothing to do with your choice of web host. As long as you know how to use FTP or web publishing software, you can use any operating system.

When it comes to web hosting, Linux has long been considered the best operating system for web servers. It is usually considered the most reliable, stable and efficient system. If, like most websites, your website is a "brochure," a Linux server is ideal. Websites using the Linux operating system have very high uptime and very little downtime.

If you plan to build your website using ASP, FrontPage, .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or some other proprietary technology from Microsoft, you may need to use a Windows host. All other languages ​​can be hosted on both platforms. In general, unless you're specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another, your time is much better spent looking for a really good host than a really good server.