Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Web Hosting

The World Wide Web is a massive collection of web sites, all hosted on computers (called web servers) all over the world. The web server (computer) where your web site's html files, graphics, etc. reside is known as the web host. Web hosting clients simply upload their web sites to a shared (or dedicated) webserver, which the ISP maintains to ensure a constant, fast connection to the Internet.
A Web Hosting company provides you space on their web server which allows you anyone on the Internet to view your web site. Web Hosts charge on a monthly basis and provide differing levels of service.

Design and Building Your Web Site

Creating your web site is easier than ever with our latest site building tools. Choose from our professional designs or use your favorite third-party tool. Yahoo! Web Hosting Tools New and Improved We've made creating a web site easier than ever: Choose a professionally created design. Easily add and format photos, a logo, and text with a few clicks. Get guidance and help every step of the way. Third Party Tools We support popular third-party design tools like Adobe Dreamweaver®, Adobe GoLive®, and Microsoft Front Page® (2000 and 2002).
*Interactive Enhancements You can spice up your site with Flash, Shockwave, audio, video, slide shows, and more. We also support major scripting and database tools like PHP, Perl, and MySQL. Room to Grow...and Grow Get plenty of capacity to build many web pages and support lots of visitors. Web hosting plans start with 5GB of disk space and 200GB/mo. of data transfer. Capacity Go ahead and grow as much as you want we've got you covered! Our popular Yahoo! Web Hosting Starter plan comes with: 5GB of disk space: With enough space to build 5, 10 even 25,000 web pages chances are that Yahoo! Web Hosting Starter offers more than enough storage to get you going!
** 200GB of data transfer per month: Plenty of capacity to support anywhere from 1,000 to half a million visitors each month.
** Easy upgrades: Should you need more capacity, you can purchase more disk space and bandwidth or just upgrade to Yahoo! Web Hosting Standard or Professional. No additional fees, beyond the monthly fee, are charged when you upgrade. Scalability We host more than 30 million web sites.*** You can rely on Yahoo! Web Hosting to handle your most advanced hosting needs.

Hosting reliability and uptime

Multiple racks of servers, and how a datacenter commonly looks.
Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment.
A popular claim from the popular hosting providers is '99% or 99.9% server uptime' but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn't account for network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider. Many providers tie uptime, and accessibility, into their own Service Level Agreement, or SLA. SLAs may or may not include refunds, or reduced costs if performance goals are not met. One must be extremely careful when selecting a new company and they should read all terms and conditions carefully. A potential customer should also check out the webhosting company's Acceptable Use Policy AUP in order to avoid potential cancellation of services due to activities that are considered a violation.