To Share or Not to Share?

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This article may be published electronically or in print, free of charge, without alteration to any content and the resource box at the end of the article is included in it'sentirity without alteration. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.To Share or Not to Share a Web Host?***********************************************************When looking for a hosting solution for your web site you'll discover you have the choice of shared or dedicated hosting.
This article will breifly explain the difference betweenthem.Shared hosting is what it says it is. Your web site shares a server with other web sites.
You don't have access to the other web sites files, they don't have access to yours andyou don't share a domain name. What you do share is the machine and the scripts that are pre-installed on it.
Why would you do this?Because it's cheaper.As you can understand, the cost of setting up a server machine is not inexpensive. Even relatively large web sites are only a few hundred megabytes, so today's computers with multiple hard drives are easily able to handle the space.
There can be as many as one or two hundred web sites on a shared server.You'll find there are different platforms available in shared hosting too. You will find you can have Unix/Linux or Windows NT/2000 as your platform.
You don't have to choosethe platform your PC is running. This has nothing to do with what the server needs to operate on.
Unix platforms are very stable and are perfect if you have a site using mostly HTML pages, PHP or CGI. If you are using scripting such as Active Server Pages, have designed your web site using FrontPage, or need access to a Microsoft Access or SQL Server database, you need a Windows platform.Shared hosting usually comes with a heap of extras and most are included in the price.
You can get email, auto-oresponders, pre-installed scripts including counters and mail scripts, password protected directories, your own cgi-bin, browser based control panels, secure directories and more. Check the options to see that you are getting what you need.However, if you need complete control of your server, you need a dedicated server.
Obviously if you're not going toshare the server with anyone, it is going to be more expensive.Dedicated servers are usually only required by experienced developers. If you're not sure if you need a dedicatedserver, then you probably only need shared hosting.
If you're in doubt, contact the company you are consideringhosting with and ask them about their products in detail. Article Tags: Don't Have Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .