Disk Space or Storage - Because your website is a collection of files
being offered on the internet for viewing, they have to be stored
somewhere for retrieval and take up space. Each web server has a finite
amount of hard disk memory to divide up and offer to hosting customers.
Typically that space is divided up by different package levels so that the
more you pay, the more space you are allowed to store pictures, web
pages, videos and whatever other files you like on the web server's hard
drive. If your website gets bigger than the space you are given, you will
need to purchase more disk space from the web host.
Bandwidth or Data Transfer - Whenever you visit a website and view a
page, you are transfering a copy of the files that make up that page over
the internet from the web server to your computer. If the page you are
viewing consists of an HTML file that is 3KB in size and three pictures of
47KB, 100KB and 250 KB, then you have just used 400KB of bandwidth
or data transfer, because that is the total amount of data you just
downloaded from the web server to view that page. Bandwidth is a
commodity like disk space that the web host has to buy from its internet
service provider, so it too is divided up and offered to the customers in
specific amounts. Bandwidth amounts are usually measured in gigabytes
(GB), because while only one copy of your files needs to be stored on the
server, thousands or even millions of copies may be downloaded for
viewing. If your website is viewed more times than the amount of
bandwidth you are allowed can handle, your website may be turned off
until the next billing period starts, or you may simply be billed for the
excess amount used, depending on your host's policies. You can always
purchase more bandwidth as your site's traffic increases.
Uptime - In an ideal world, every web server would be up and running and
offering your web pages to the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
forever. However, web servers are computers, and like any other computer,
things happen to make them fail, or they get old and out of date and
require maintenance and repair. When a web host gives you a 99% uptime
guarantee, they are saying that the web server will be up and running for
99% of the billing period. If they fail to meet this guarantee, most web
hosts will refund a certain portion of your money depending on the amount
of excess downtime they experienced.
Traffic Statistics - Website traffic statistics programs try to track visitors
to your website. They can track how many times your site was visited, how
many visitors were unique and how many returned more than once, which
pages were most popular, where the visitors came to your site from, what
search terms they used in the search engines, and many other types of
information which could be useful to you in marketing your website to a
target audience. These statistics can be displayed in tables, graphs and
charts by hour, day, week, month or year. Some statistics programs are
better than others and offer more types of data, better displays, easier
navigation or other useful features. Most web hosts today offer some sort
of traffic statistics software with their hosting packages.
CGI Scripts - Many web hosts offer a variety of free CGI scripts with
their packages. These are things like hit counters, guestbooks, form mail
programs, message boards, and other programs that allow your website to
perform commonly desired functions. You can use the ones your host
provides you with or you can upload and run custom CGI scripts written
by yourself or somebody else to perform different tasks like conducting a
survey or processing customer information to produce an automatic price
quote. Most CGI scripts are written in common programming languages
like Perl, PHP or ASP.
You could spend a long time trying to learn everything there is to know
about web hosting, but if you've read this far then you should be armed
with the basic knowledge you need to understand what different web hosts
are offering you. Your next task is to figure out what you need and go out
and find a host that wants to give it to you at a great price!
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