To have a web site or a web presence everyone must have a web host. A web hosting service allows you to “rent” or “borrow” space on very fast hard drives called servers. A web host is responsible for making sure your web site is visible 24/7 to site visitors on the World Wide Web. There are different types of web hosts who offer different services.

Free Web Hosts
Free web hosts allow you to store your files on the servers for no monthly fee. In exchange you may purchase a domain from the host, display a banner on your site, or be expected to submit to an active forum to offset the costs of your ‘free’ hosting.

Paid Hosting
Paid web hosts provide basically the same service as a free web host in getting your web site online, however they charge a monthly fee for their services and provide many more features to their users. They do not require ad banners or pop-ups to be placed on users sites. Some features paid hosts offer include: customer support, email, FTP, more web space and bandwidth, PHP, MySQL, FrontPage Extensions, and countless others.

Shared or Dedicated Web Hosts
You can either share space (shared hosting) or have your own hard drive (dedicated hosting.) These servers are connected via a backbone to a huge communications network called The Internet. Your web site can then be accessed by anyone worldwide through a special address called a URL which contains your unique domain name.

The amount of space your host provides you is called disk space, or web space. The number of times your site is accessed by you or users is called bandwidth. Prices vary widely based on what your host is willing to provide.

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