What is web hosting?

What are the key aspects of a good hosting service?

Firstly, your web hosting must be reliable. Using an old and slow web server, an intermittant or slow Internet connection or unreliable power supply will mean that your website isn't always viewable for people wishing to browse and visit your website. In this day and age, with high speed communication and fast demand, a website that is not available for more than a few minutes ends up loosing business and customers.

Secondly, it must be a fast. The Internet connectivity to the web hosting server must be able to handle all the traffic from the browsing clients without slowing down the speed at which the user can browse it. The web hosting server must be fast enough to handle all the connections at the same time, process all the queries and deliver them to the client without them realising other people are browsing at the same time.

Thirdly, there must be a backup solution. The Web Host must have a redundancy plan to deal with the instances of power outages, web server failure, power surges, fire, theft, or acts of God. A good web host will have two or three back-ups of your entire data (website and emails): one on the same web hosting server but on a different hard drive, another on a different web server in the same data centre and finally in a completely different remote location that is on a seperate power grid and Internet connection.

Lastly, your web hosting must be secure. Your web host must provide secure access, using advanced password policies, encryption, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention hardware and be alert and responsive to any unauthorised hacking and sabotage attempts. These layers of security will ensure that there is no access through an unsecured route and also prevent other websites hosted on the same web server compromising the whole system by using easily guessable passwords.