HTML What Kind of Hosting Should a Student Choose?
What Kind of Hosting Should a Student Choose?
Hosting is a service for processing and storing information on servers that have permanent access to the Internet. The term "hosting" is also often used to define a site that is allocated to the user for their tasks.
Most often, hosting is used to accommodate the site on the web, so the companies providing such services are trying to improve the performance of their own services to solve the user problems in the field of web technologies. The owner of the site should take the choice of hosting with proper care because in the future this will depend on the prosperity of the placed web resource.
Students are the best when it comes to making price-quality decisions. They always choose cheapest but at the same time most reliable edit my paper services, know all the best restaurants with the affordable prices and buy only needed high-quality stuff.
So, when it comes to choosing hosting for their website students try to find the best decision that covers all their requirements. In this article we will help you to make that decision.
Choosing the Type of Hosting
There are several varieties of hosting platforms, and each of them is aimed at solving different in-scale user tasks. The owner of the site should determine exactly what kind of hosting to choose for their project. In this case, the choice must be such that the tasks are performed in full without downtime resources. Only in this case, a compromise between price and quality will be found.
Virtual Hosting (Web-hosting/Shared Hosting)
Virtual hosting is a ready-made solution designed to host sites on a public network. The hoster "settles" several users on one server, which are separated from each other and sometimes do not even know about their proximity. Site administration is carried out mainly through the control panel hosting, so placing the website is not difficult even for the beginner, and the time will take literally a few minutes.
Virtual hosting is like an apartment in an apartment building. This is a relatively cheap option with the most necessary conveniences. Such hosting is best suited for a site on WordPress or similar CMS with up to 3 thousand users per month. In terms of size, it can be a small site (one-page business card site, landing page, blog, or forum), which does not require individual configuration of the server and specific software.
Dedicated Server
The user gets remote access to a physical server, on which he can implement any of his ideas. If you choose this option, there will be no neighbors, which means that all the power of the hardware is fully subordinate to the owner. But, unlike the same virtual hosting, all operations relating to the configuration of the server and installing programs, you must do yourself or pay extra for their implementation.
A dedicated server can be compared to a detached house: spacious and cozy, but expensive and requires proper maintenance. This option is suitable for large projects that depend on certain parameters on the server and the connection with additional software.
Cloud Server
Unlike the previous options, the cloud server is not a single physical machine or part of it. A cluster of separate systems is used to store and process user data. This type of hosting is currently the most reliable because at any moment a down server is replaced by another. Resources are scaled in real-time, which eliminates the possibility of capacity shortages in a critical situation. All these advantages compete with one disadvantage - a cloud server is considered the most expensive platform, so it is mainly used by the owners of large business projects.
A cloud server can be compared to the high-tech home of the future, the technology of which is still being perfected. It is likely that soon this type of hosting will become available for mass use. Currently, this service is provided by large cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
Own Server on the Hosting Platform (Colocation)
The client places his equipment in the data center of the hosting provider and uses its infrastructure - power and network bandwidth. In most cases, server maintenance is the responsibility of the user, but in some hosts, for an additional fee, you can resort to the services of the system administrator.
Some experts consider colocation to be a separate type of hosting. However, this method can be confidently called only a subset of a dedicated server.
Calculation of the Necessary System Resources
Before you rent a hosting service, you must initially calculate the required amount of server capacity for the work of the site. If you do not do this, then at a certain point hosting may not have enough system resources to handle all requests from users. In this case, the result for the site will be disastrous - a breakdown of performance up to a complete denial of service.
Calculating the number of system resources needed for your project is an individual process. To select the parameters of the future hosting service, you can use a service that emulates HTTP requests from users to the site. By creating a test load, you can calculate how many system resources the project requires to process requests from a certain number of users for a certain amount of time.
When choosing a plan from the hoster you need to look at the following parameters:
Hard Drive Space and RAM. These two metrics are the most obvious and cause the least amount of trouble. According to statistics, most web-hosting users do not fill the server memory even by 70%. It is more important that solid-state drives (SSDs) are used for storage, and the size of RAM allows for all necessary operations.
Processor Power (CPU). The central processing unit is often called the brain of the hosting. Its main parameters are the number of cores, clock frequency, and the size of fast memory (cache). The higher the value of each parameter, the more data the hosting server can simultaneously process.
Data Channel Bandwidth and Latency. Channel width affects the amount of traffic that passes between the client and the server. The bigger it is, the more visitors are able to download the content of the site at the same time without losing performance. Network latency affects the speed of requests. This factor is especially important for game services and online exchanges.
Traffic. This is the amount of information that users upload and download when they are active on the website. The passing traffic threshold depends on the bandwidth and CPU resources. Note that there are providers who claim unlimited traffic on web hosting, but in practice, with prolonged high load on the Internet channel, may require the user to pay additional fees.
A far-sighted website owner is not afraid to dream about the bright future of his brainchild, so you need to take into account the development of the project and take some resources "in reserve". When things go well, the load can increase at a rate of 10-20% per month. This is also relevant for an online store or similar web resource that has a fluctuating audience depending on external factors (for example, seasonal sales).
Choosing a Hosting Provider
It is better to choose the website of such a hoster with whom you can conduct long-term cooperation. Below are all the criteria that can meet only quality hosting providers. Guided by these criteria, you can easily screen out most of the bad hosting companies and one-day companies.
Hosting reputation in the market. It’s quite the same when you’re choosing a writing essay company for your college projects. You should always check helpful reddit reviews to make sure you can trust this service. There are hundreds of hosting providers, and it is quite difficult to choose a worthwhile one among them. If you entrust your project to a little-known company with cheap rates, you may run into fraud or low-quality services. In both cases, there is a risk of losing site files, the reputation of search engines and customers. The stability of such hosting also remains questionable, and no one guarantees that the company will not close in the near future. To avoid such troubles, it is enough to examine information about the hosting provider in all available sources. It is necessary to review and make a conclusion about the company at least on the following factors: user reviews, age in the market, and the number of customers in the present time. Reliable hosting must have a long history and a decent size customer base gained over the years.
Safety. Every hoster should be interested in the security of customer data. But not all are able to provide it. A good hosting provider provides the user with an extensive set of technical tools, including DDoS attack monitoring, a reliable firewall, mail antivirus, and regular backups.
There is no perfect prescription for security on the Internet. Even government and international corporate sites regularly fall victim to DDoS attacks and hacks. The foundation of network security is still a strong password culture and administrator competence. The hosting protection system also makes a significant contribution to the overall security of web resources.
Datacenter stability. It is extremely important that the hosted site remains up and running as long as possible and its activity is not interrupted by technical failures. Uninterrupted availability or fault tolerance of the server is called Uptime. The higher the uptime of the hosting, the more the company can be trusted. An excellent Uptime level is 99.982% or higher, which corresponds to the TIER-III reliability category.
Free hosting testing. Many hosting providers offer to test their products for a certain period of time, which is usually from a week to a month. This allows the site owner to decide whether to stop the choice of hosting on the tested variant, try another plan or go to a different provider altogether.
Resource scalability. Over time, the hosted website will begin to gain popularity and it will become "cramped" in its hosting. At such times, it requires an increase in system capacity and everything begins to depend on whether the hosting supports scalable resources.
So that the process of cooperation does not cause trouble relating to the increase of system resources, it is recommended to write to the hosting support and ask the appropriate question before renting.
Support. Another sign of high-class hosting is a well-functioning technical support service. Reliable providers accept customer requests around the clock through several communication channels, and the response time does not exceed 15 minutes. Qualification of technical support specialists allows solving a wide range of issues: from software configuration to critical failures.
Considering the financial situation of beginner web users, we advise paying attention to:
1. Disk space. If a student is a little familiar with the subject, he probably heard the phrase - the more server memory, the more solid space for downloading files. It is important to understand that 2-3 GB is enough to start the site. There are very few materials at the start - then why overpay for idle space. You can always buy more memory.
2. Server technologies. It is good if the hosting supports technologies MySQL, PHP, CGI, Perl, SSI, and others. The version must match the control system model - CMS site.
3. Information amount. The amount of traffic is determined as follows: the average size of the page is multiplied by the expected number of its impressions per month. If the limit is exceeded, the hoster will require an additional fee or disconnect the site.
4. Administrator capabilities. This implies an acceptable number of FTP accounts and email accounts. For a student, it is enough to have 1 address. It is worth it to study the control panel. The easier it is to configure, the faster the web page will be promoted.
To Summarize
Numerous advertising promises of hosting providers have "dark" sides, which not every user or even a specialist will be able to identify. Without the right guidelines, the search can be quite difficult and sometimes burdensome.
Before buying hosting, the student needs to remember three rules: 1) A lot does not mean good; 2) A quality product is never free; 3) Do not delay, and it's time to start acting. While you languish in thinking, others are already making their first money and enjoying their lives. An Internet site is not an office where strict rules apply and a certain amount of tasks must be completed. It is an opportunity to show yourself to the world, to prove your abilities.
