Web Hosting

A web hosting service provides space on a web-connected server to customers who wish to put a web site on the World Wide Web.

Customers can store information, images, video, audio, etc on the server and make it available to anyone surfing the web.

The most basic hosting service is web page and (small) file hosting. Files can be uploaded by customers to the web server via FTP (file transfer protocol) or a Web interface (such as cPanel).

Many customers require a hosting package that provides database support (usually MySQL) and application development platforms (usually PHP).

Such a package allows customers to install scripts for forums and content management scripts such as blogging platforms. For e-commerce, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for encrypted data transmission is available at a very modest cost.

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the Internet.

Many web hosts claim a 99.9% uptime. This often refers only to the server itself operating satisfactorily but does not take network downtime into account.