07/04/09 : Welcome to www.web-hosting.freehosting.net. Thanks for your visit.
This site is an accumulation of information regarding web hosting.
It's meant to offer general hosting and web development information
as well as a testing mechanism for dynamically demonstrating web hosting
providers uptime. We hope you find the information helpful, and
invite you to share your own experiences: good, bad, or indifferent.
Please let us know if you have suggestions for improvements to any
of the tests or information here. Thanks.
Please contact the webmaster with updates or questions.
How do you define web hosting? Very simply, web hosting is a place to put files intended to be shared on the Internet.
Usually it's accompanied by an address (called a URL, and sometimes a URI) which allows someone with a
web browser to request your file(s) from that address. The "web" reference is a relic from the construct known
as the world wide web (or, "www" which you often see in front of URLs such as www.hosting411.info for example).
More about "addresses" on the web. Addresses come in some different flavors. A domain is like a box
which contains lots of specific items. Domains must be rented from registrars. Free web hosting popularized
the idea of sharing subdomains of a rented domain. For example, eshire.net is a domain which was rented. The folks
at Eshire offer free web hosting, which means when someone signs up either they must register (rent) a domain of
their own, or choose a free address such as "mysite.eshire.net" which borrows from the domain "eshire.net" and thus
does not require an additional registration fee. (That's why subdomains are usually free.)
Simply put, web hosting is
Web Hosting Basics...
"What is web hosting?"
Web hosting comes in different shapes and sizes.
The major categories are:
Shared Web Hosting,
Virtual Private Hosting and
Dedicated Hosting.
Within those categories you find subcategories such as ecommerce hosting and
rich media hosting.
At a basic level, the major category differences break down between cost and performance.
Higher cost usually means higher performance, more tools and more resources.
Higher performance often means increased maintenance on your part, though even higher
costs might mitigate this.
On a cost basis, shared hosting is always the least expensive....
Shared hosting is generally
aimed at beginners and intermediate users (though if your specific application doesn't require
CGI or database access advanced users can save tons of money with shared hosting). As the name
implies, Shared hosting is "sharing" the hosting enviroment. Usually your web site lives in
a folder along side many other folks web sites, and the same web server process serves up
all of the those sites on request. This means any site in a shared enviroment that acts
as a bandwidth hog will take CPU and disk access time away from other neighboring sites
in the enviroment. Many shared hosting providers work to mitigate these circumstances
by controlling the bandwidth, file sizes and overall resource usage available to any one
site. Upgrades in a shared hosting enviroment generally consist of making additional
bandwidth, file size and CGI access available... basically allowing you to take up a
higher priority among your neighbors. All in all this is a very good balance of cost
versus performance.
Continuing the cost analysis angle; Virtual private hosting is the next major step up...
It's the stop gap between shared and dedicated hosting.
Virtual hosting still shares a machine or disk, but the web server software and indeed the
entire operating system enviroment is usually isolated for each site in a virtual hosting
enviroment. So, you might have a computer or disk with 10 sites on it, 10 different web servers
for those sites, and 10 isolated operating enviroments. The advantages include better control
of resource allocation and more enforceable distribution (ie. neighbors who hog CPU and disk
time in a shared enviroment have a more tightly controlled allocation of CPU and disk time in a virtual
private server enviroment, so the number of cycles available to your processes are not
diminished... here folks don't have to compete for each second, the allotments are usually fixed).
Another advantage is that you usually have robust CGI and
database accessibility... and if you have a CGI that accidentally runs an infinite loop,
it won't suck up your neighbors CPU bandwidth allocations since the operating system enviroment
is isolated. (Consider this same scenario in a shared hosting enviroment where your
CGI's infinite loop might lock up the system and prevent any other site in that shared
enviroment from being served either.... very very bad!)
At the top of the cost pyramid is dedicated hosting....
This usually requires you have
considerable technical skills at your disposal. Dedicated hosting basically means you have
the whole machine or disk to yourself. It also can mean that when your web server falls down,
you will have to restart it. Worse, it can mean if your site gets DDOS attacked that you
might have to manage most if not all of the strategy to mitigate the attack. While
shared hosting providers don't tend to highlight this facet, when one of their sites gets DOS'd,
because it impacts the rest of the sites in their enviroment, they are highly motivated
to mitigate the attack, and likely have highly skilled administrators available to do so.
This is often a hidden advantage to hosting in a shared (or even a virtual private)
enviroment. However, if your site is a frequent target of DOS attacks, your relationship
with your hosting provider may be strained to the point of you being booted, or you
being charged specifically to help offset the special costs associated with managing your
site and it's impact on the rest of the shared users.
Enough with the salad, lets get to the details...
"Yipes! I may be cheap, but I understand the value of shared web hosting! Tell me more please."
"Holy cow, virtual private hosting sounds like the best thing since sliced bread. Tell me more please!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah... that's great, but my Purchase Order specifically says 'dedicated hosting'."
"I'm just super confused now... what exactly is all this web hosting mumbo jumbo?"
Uh, web what now?! (just let me book my vacation to disneyland)
Updated: 07/04/09 -
Community Architect --
Web hosting is a competitive market place, made more so by the plethora of mini hosting providers
that exist as result of participating in a web hosting reseller program. Community Architect is
one such reseller program. They haven't been accepting new resellers during the years they've been
owned by United Online. But, prior to being sold off from About.com, they'd signed up quite a few
partners that still offer free and paid web hosting packages powered by Community Architect.
Starting as North Sky, Inc. Community Architect was acquired by About.com (NASDAQ: BOUT) sometime in the year 2000,
which was later aquired by Primedia (NYSE: PRM). In 2004 United Online (NASDAQ: UNTD) the parent company formed by
the combination of NetZero and Juno, and later BlueLight bought the Community Architect business unit of
About.com from Primedia. The amount of interest companies have shown in this property seems to speak well
of it's viability in contributing to their bottom lines, or so one would hope. That such free hosting power
houses as FreeServers and 50megs host on Community Architect's platform seems very strong endorsement indeed.
Both of those properties have been around for almost ten years now. And in a competitive environment like
hosting that's saying something.
Some of the partners offering services powered by Community Architect include,
00Server, 20M, Draze, Bappy, CyberBREE, eShire, FanSpace, FreeWebTools, TecBox, and WorldBreak
to name a few. The Community Architect shared hosting platform allows an owner
of a domain to offer subdomain addresses (for example "bappy.com" can offer
"mysite.bappy.com" with it's own document root and user rights separate from the bappy.com domain
itself). If the owner of the domain doesn't want to offer subdomains, they can offer domain transfers
or new domain registration. (Domain transfer meaning the primary and secondary name
servers being pointed at the Community Architect name servers... not actually a
transfer of registar).
Packages include a range of price points and features which
easily cover inexperienced beginners with simple applications in mind up through
CGI and Database users wanting to do something decidedly more advanced. Perhaps most
enticing is even the ability to offer free web hosting to get fence sitters to
dive in and hopefully upgrade to a paid offering when they discover how useful a
web site can be.
This is an effort to provide an ongoing feedback mechanism to existing webmasters,
webmasters who might be shopping for a host or partnership, and anyone interested
in Community Architect's web hosting products or services.
Update: If you have a Community Architect partnership established, and want to
extend your brand beyond the basic options available through web interfaces, you
can find additional information here.
Please contact the webmaster with updates or questions.
