Shared Hosting

Shared hosting, or shared web hosting as it is known in some cases is seen as the most basic form of web hosting since most shared web hosting plans come with very basic resources and the servers themselves are shared amongst many different shared hosting accounts. Shared web hosting allows you to start off easily in the web hosting world since most shared hosting packages some with professional web hosting support and most shared web hosting accounts are the cheapest form of web hosting around at this moment in time.

Shared hosting can be used for the hosting of basic websites that don’t receive much traffic, since you will find that you don’t have much disk space or bandwidth assigned to your basic shared web hosting plan; shared web hosting packages can also be used as development environments in which you can test out any new websites or applications that you have built before deploying them into a live and active web hosting environment.

Shared web hosting accounts are normally hosted on high specification servers due to the nature of shared web hosting that makes the servers hosting shared web hosting accounts easy targets for hackers and other malicious attackers. Although shared web hosting servers are now more secure than they used to be, it doesn’t take a hacker much effort to break into a shared hosting server that has weak security measures in place. High specification normally fair better than low specification servers when it comes to malicious attacks, since they can normally put up with a higher server load. However, the performance of a server during a malicious attack also depends on the server load at the time, meaning that if a server was to get attacked when it had a high load anyway it would probably crash.

Shared hosting normally comes in two different forms: Linux based shared website hosting and Windows based shared website hosting. Shared Linux web hosting is aimed at those who want to host their Linux orientated application in a Linux web hosting environment, or for those who want to have access to Linux based web hosting services that use programs such as Apache and Exim. Windows based web hosting is aimed towards those who need to host their websites and application in a Windows based web hosting environment.

Shared Linux hosting tends to be the cheapest form of shared web hosting available since web hosting providers don’t have to pay any sort of license fee for the right to use a majority of Linux software, including the main Linux distribution that they will be basing their web hosting servers on. Windows web hosting on the other hand can be more expensive since web hosting companies have to pay licensing fees to use Microsoft Windows Server, and other applications needed can also cost web hosts.

PHP and MySQL are the two main products that are used for development on Linux based web hosting platforms - PHP being the scripting language used by many and MySQL being the database system that is used in conjunction with PHP and many other languages. PHP and MySQL are open source meaning that they are free to use and can be installed on many different operating systems meaning that you can easily install them on your desktop machine and use them for local development. ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server (also know as MSSQL) are the Windows equivalents of PHP and MySQL; although PHP and MySQL will also run on a Winodws based operating system, they normally run better together on a Linux shared web hosting. ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server can only be run and used in a Windows environment since they are both Microsoft products, thus meaning that you can only use Windows shared web hosting if you need access to use both products for your websites and applications.

Most web hosting providers provide clients with control panel access to allow them to manage and administrate many different aspects shared web hosting account using a web based interface. There are many different control panels that web hosting companies can use for shared web hosting, such as cPanel and Plesk, or in some cases a web hosting provider may choose to use its own in house web hosting control panel for easier management. Linux shared web hosting providers often use cPanel as their control panel of choice since it is cheap to purchase and allows easy management of hosting accounts on their end, and allows clients to manage their web hosting accounts with ease. Plesk is the control panel of choice for many Windows shared web hosting providers since it also allows them to manage web hosting accounts with complete ease, but it also gives clients complete interaction with their shared web hosting package and the server that they are hosted on.

In some cases, shared web hosting may not always be reliable since fraudsters can sometimes slip through the net and have their web hosting accounts setup on a shared web hosting server, which in most cases can have adverse effect on you if you are hosted on the same shared hosting server as a spammer or malicious attacker and their other victims. The main purpose that a spammer would have with a shared web hosting account would be to use it to send out many of their emails to unwilling victims, and this in itself can have an effect on the overall performance of the shared web hosting server; in this case, your website and other websites would be effected if they were hosted on the same server. A malicious attacker on the other hand may want to use a shared web hosting account as a way to gain access to the shared web hosting server itself, meaning that if a server’s security is lax then it could have an adverse affect on all the shared web hosting accounts that it hosts.

As many web hosting providers are keen to put on a good image for new shared web hosting customers in the hope that they will upgrade to a higher end package in the future, many provide a high level of customer support for those who are on shared web hosting to ensure that they have a good experience with the web hosting company. More and more web hosting providers are striving to provide customers with 24×7 support so that if a customer has a query or a problem at any time of the day, they can ensure that it will be sorted in a fast and timely manner, which in most cases boosts the satisfaction of shared website hosting customers. Customer service is one of the major factors that people just web hosting providers on, since they see that it as if a web hosting provider isn’t able to respond to customer queries fast then they’re unlike to respond to a crashed shared hosting server in a timely manner to reduce the amount of downtime suffered.

In conclusion, shared web hosting is designed for those who want to start off at a very basic level in the web hosting industry. If you choose a professional web hosting provider that is able to provide you with a high level of customer support then you will find it easy to use your webhosting account, and will also ensure that you have an experienced support team to turn to in times of need. Finding a shared web hosting package to suit your needs needn’t be hard either, since shared hosting can come based on both Windows Hosting and Linux web hosting platforms.