Maui Web hosting
Maui Web Designer
Making a Web site available on the Internet. Many ISPs host a few
personal Web pages for an individual at no additional cost above the
monthly service fee, but the address is subordinate to the ISP; for
example, www.friendlyisp.com/pat_smith.
Multi-page, commercial Web sites are hosted at a very wide range of
prices, and the customer's registered domain name is used. A single
computer can hold dozens to hundreds of small Web sites, while a
dedicated computer or multiple computers (from a handful to thousands)
may be used for one large Web site.
Entirely or Partially Managed
Web hosting organizations can provide full service, including site
design and programming as well as all e-commerce facilities. If
customers wish to use their own servers and software, all their
privately owned equipment can be co-located at the ISP, which provides
power, Internet access and some level of management, which may be as
little as ensuring that the servers are always running.
Host Yourself
Many medium to large enterprises host their own Web sites and manage
their own servers in their own facilities. Even home users can try,
although many ISPs block traffic going to customer's Web server (see
DDNS relay). See ISP, co-location and how to register a domain name.
Wikipedia
web hosting
Web hosting is a service that provides Internet users with online
systems for storing information, images, video, or any content
accessible via the web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a
server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet
connectivity, typically in a data center.
Types of hosting
Hosting can be split up into six general types: free, shared, reseller,
virtual private server, dedicated, and colocated.
Free hosting: just about all the free web hosting available is
extremely limited when compared to pay hosting. Free web hosts
generally require their own ads on your site, only allow web-based
uploading and editing of your site, and have very tight disk space and
traffic limits. Still, most people get their start via free web
hosting.
Shared hosting: one's Web site is placed on the same server as several
hundred other sites. A problem with another site on the server can
bring all of the sites down. Shared hosting also brings with it some
restrictions regarding what exactly can be done, although these
restrictions are nowhere near as restrictive as for free hosting.
Reseller hosting: designed for those who want to become Web hosts
themselves. One gets a large amount of space and bandwidth that can be
divided up among as many sites as the user wants to put on his account.
A reseller account is placed on the same server with other reseller
accounts, just like with shared hosting but there are fewer accounts.
Virtual Private Server hosting: Virtual Private Server technology
enables one physical server to house several Virtual Environments which
behave exactly like an isolated stand-alone server. This is often a
much more affordable solution than a dedicated server, normally
offering all the same benefits, such as root access.
Dedicated hosting: With dedicated hosting, one gets a server of his
own. They have no restrictions, except for those designed to maintain
the integrity of the Web host's network (for instance, banning sites
with adult content due to the increase risk of attack by hackers and
grey legal issues for the ISP). Unless a separate plan is purchased
from the host, the user is also generally on his own. This can be an
expensive proposition, as the purchase of the dedicated server itself
is generally far more expensive compared to shared hosting.
Colocated hosting: This involves a server the user purchases himself
and installs at the host's data center. Besides unmonitored reboots,
the user must pay extra for many services dedicated hosting provides by
default. Colocated hosting is generally chosen by people with server
administration experience and those with more significant needs than
which can be satisfied by dedicated or shared hosting. This is usually
the most expensive and least cost effective option if you are not
colocating many servers.
Obtaining hosting
Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access
plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.
The free services generally have restrictions on how the space can be
used, including but not limited to: advertising, bandwidth
restrictions, and programs that can be used to edit sites.
Businesses are generally restricted to using a paid Web host to host
their site on. Paid Web hosts usually provide many more features,
including 24/7 support and personalized assistance. Sites hosted on
paid Web hosts also tend to load more quickly since each server hosts
fewer sites, giving each site a larger proportion of resources.
A customer also needs to evaluate the requirements of the application.
Such considerations include database server software, scripting
software, and operating system. Active Server Pages (ASP) web sites
require a Microsoft Windows based server platform. Most hosting
providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of
different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the
LAMP Platform. This includes Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (or Python
or Perl). Usually there is limited interoperability between the two,
although Linux servers can integrate with Windows file services through
Samba, and some Linux hosts provide support for Microsoft FrontPage
server extensions.
Regardless of whether one is a business or has a personal site that
needs to be hosted, it has to be created first. HTML experience is
usually required to create a site (and more advanced languages can be
used for interactive content, such as PHP or Perl), but those without
design experience can hire a Web designer to do the heavy lifting. Once
the site is online there's not much else that's required: the host
generally handles the technical behind-the-scenes work with the server.