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Shared Web hosting is often called Virtual hosting. This kind of service is provided with hosting a certain amount of web sites on the same physical server. All clients use same Operating System, Software and Bandwidth.

There are two possible ways of providing shared web hosting that is free and paid hosting that certainly have their advantages and disadvantages.

Free Web Hosting vs Chargeable Web Hosting

The word "free" doesn't always mean what it usually does, there's price for everything same works for the web hosting business.

First you should remember that it's very difficult to identify the hosting company reliability which plays a vital role in free web hosting as you have no control over your Internet activity. The problem is that you receive a little or no support when have some problems with your hosted site. You receive no guarantees about the quality of web hosting services.

Another problem is that the source of free sites financing is money received for advertisements placed on your site without letting you know. In case you are running a commercial site your visitors might not like to be advertised by the third parties just to see your commercial message.
Free web hosting can also be provided as advertisement itself. The main purpose such web hosting is to attract clients for the Chargeable Web Hosting.

Chargeable shared web hosting can provide you with security guarantees. In this case the team of administrators is capable to provide the inside and outside security. As for the outside security it isn't unique for hosting and lies in regular software modernization and some other standard procedures. The inside security has to be provided to protect users from their "neighbors" who already have authorized access to the system.

Another aspect of customers' protection is control over the server loading and overloading. In this area server overloading must be reduced so the speed of websites loading and time taken for scripts responding.

What Resources You Might Require?

Starting your presence in the Internet you should identify how much disk space and bandwidth you might need. It'll depend on the characteristics of your site.

For small or medium web site it would be required from 50 to 200 Mb. You can calculate the size of your site in such a way: multiply the number of web pages in your site and one page approximate size. Expect your every page to be about 10-100k depending on images size.

In case you're planning to have a large web site (or just a lot of multimedia in a small one) you're going to need much disk space. Another aspect that influences the amount of resources you're going to need is the nature of the site itself. The site on which there is extensive use of video, audio or large graphics requires more disk space then the one that is primarily text based. As for bandwidth, it depends on that how much data you will transfer to your visitors. You can determine approximate bandwidth multiplying your average page size and number of expected page views per month.( if page size - 50K, views/month - 10 000, then 0,05*20,000=1Gb)

Bandwidth usually increases as the allocated disk space does.

Some More Requirements You Should Also Consider

Shared web hosting can be provided on different operating systems platforms. The most popular are Linux and Windows operating systems. If you have no preferences choose one depending on how you are planning to maintain your web hosting and what kind of web site you are to have. Linux operating system is meant for large network systems and requires more experience and knowledge than Windows OS.

Windows OS is the best choice for beginners and for those companies that do not wish to deal with Linux complex administration.

Before signing up find out if the web hosting company you chose allows using the scripts you prefer like PHP or Java. Same goes for databases like MySQL and others.

Security in shared web hosting is a very important aspect of your further Internet activity. Find out if the potential host is able to provide you with all the necessary guarantees and technical support in case you have any problems with your web site.

Conclusion

By means of shared web hosting you can establish your Internet presence with highly- capable resources at a minimal cost. You don't have to possess some advanced technical knowledge to administrate your web site. So shared hosting is a perfect choice for beginners, small businesses and for those customers whose sites do not require many resources.