Most businesses who operate online, or who have an online presence will at some point need to consider web space, and with web space you need to choose a web host to provide that web space.
Most companies will simply browse online and choose a company which looks reputable or they will go by word of mouth, maybe a recommendation from a friend or their web designer. It’s a big scary world out there in the world wide web, there are a lot of unscrupulous companies and individuals out there who may claim to offer a good service, but in reality they may not live up to their word.
Web Space can be purchased cheaply, however this is usually on what is known as a shared server, which is basically one big powerful computer which hosts several websites on, from a handful of sites to hundreds. The trouble with shared servers is, if the web host does not look after and monitor the websites on the server carefully, they can operate illegally and carry out what is regarded as malicious activity, such as infecting other websites or computers. Search engines can penalise servers where this kind of activity is allowed to go un-monitored.
For this reason, many large companies or businesses who need a really secure web space will host their sites on what is known as a dedicated server.
Dedicated servers can be hired from hosting companies, but again the company needs to be trustworthy and guarantee your site is actually hosted on a dedicated server. Some people simply want full control of their site and they invest in their own dedicated server which will need to be permanently connected to the Internet.
Most people will generally only come into contact with Tower Servers and Rack Servers, both of which do the same thing. It can be more expensive to rent dedicated servers in comparison to shared server space but the rewards should be worth it. If your business requires stability on the net then a dedicated server will offer this better and if set up correctly will offer better security online. All servers can experience problems though and ‘down time’ where the server will have time offline can cause great problems for website owners on any server which goes down or is hacked into. This is where a bit of research and word of mouth experience can come in useful, as all web host companies will profess to have great ‘up time’ but in some cases, this can be far from the truth.
The amount of trouble a company will go to when backing up and uploading their website to a new server will make changing web hosts an experience which can be both costly and time consuming, search engines can also temporarily penalise a site which is constantly changed between servers. So research is the key and making sure you choose the web space for your website.