Web Hosting Specifics

When it comes to web hosting there are a number of features that are related with the services. These features are required to be used in combination with each other so that it managing and maintaining a website can be made easy. There are plenty of web hosting services available in the web industry today, but each offers different extra features with a few common amongst them. Here, below are some of the features that are explained so that you can understand how exactly they are capable of helping in hosting your website.

1. Disk Space or Web Space:

This space is in context with the volume of disk storage provided by the web hosting service to store a website on the web hosting companies server. It can range anywhere from one GB to 10GB, this means that if each web page is about thirty KB, it is possible to store approximately three thousand static web pages for 1GB disk space. A single website can use anywhere between five to fifty MB of disk space. However, the disk space is also provided for other functions besides the web pages, like email, database files and archived web log files.

2. Bandwidth or Data Transfer:

The total volume of data allowed to be transferred from a website every month, or better defined by using the term 'monthly traffic.' This means that the more users visiting a website, the more the bandwidth required.

3. Protected directories:

This is an important feature for websites, using a password webmasters can prevent access to directories or pages of a website. Only users that have a login ID can access these restricted areas. In order to enable the password protection webmasters are needed to create and modify the ".htaccess" and ".htpasswd" files, though majority of the web hosting services have a Control Panel to do this.

4. Email Features:

When signing up for a web hosting account, the providers also give email accounts these can be anywhere from twenty to 'n' in number. The privilege of such accounts is that they have it, with the website address as the forward address, for instance, xyz@example.com assuming the website address is www.example.com. These email features made available with the web hosting services also have additional functionalities like Email Forwarding / Alias, Auto responders, Mailing List and Spam Filtering.

5. FTP:

File Transfer Protocol, these accounts are used to upload the websites that have been created on the computer to the web server. Web host providers support multiple FTP accounts, incase multiple users are needed to upload web pages on the server. Majority of the times, one FTP account is not sufficient, this is the reason that you are provided with multiple accounts. Of course FTP is not the only way of uploading files to the web server, programs like FrontPage Extension help in uploading directly.

6. Platforms or Softwares:

The business web servers are required to operate on an OS 'aka' a server platform. Majority of the server platforms are Microsoft Windows NT/ 2000 and Unix. Other Unix varieties that are popular with web host include OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux version. The Control panel is another feature that is seen in platforms, a very helpful tool that enables management of web account, like managing sub domains, email accounts, directories, log files, access statistics and other extra functions.

7. Other Features that are also supported by web host companies are e-commerce features, like SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) used to secure server to browser transactions, shopping cart, a software that facilitates an online shopping store. MySQL is also featured in the plans, and is an open source database and using phpMyAdmin the database can be administered over the web. Last but not the least, is the server-side functionality, these applications are executed or performed on the web server. The applications are defined as CGI Scripts, JSP, ASP, PHP, Perl, PYTHON, Flash, Real Audio, Real Video, etc.

8. Other small features that are also seen in web hosting plans are Free website templates, 24/7 system monitoring, Backups, Virtual Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Domain search / register, Domain transfer, etc.

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