For those of you who don’t really understand where or how your
web page is sitting on your hosting sever, this is a basic over
view of how it works.
A server is basically hardware and software and protocol. We
will go over these three basics of your hosting server.
• Server hardware.
Server hardware is so similar to your old PC hardware that the
price of server hardware has come down considerably. Down enough
that it’s tempting for a lot of us to host our own server. But
that’s a whole different article. All a server is:
• Very fast processor. • A large amount of RAM. • A vast amount
of Disk Space. • Connection to a T1 line (access to the outside
world).
The hardware is housed in very large office buildings. There are
many racks of servers filling these climate controlled rooms.
Most of the server host brag of their 99% or better uptime. This
is very impressive and another reason to use a server host. How
often have you re-booted your PC in the past?
• Software. (Operating system)
There different operating systems on the market. Most likely the
software on your server is running Apache on Linux, an open
source product. Servers need to be secured and an open source
application is more likely to be less buggy and more secure then
their larger competitor Microsoft.
These servers use an interface for you to access and configure
them, a control panel. Some control panels are more complicated
then others. Depending how technical you are, this is a point of
concern when picking a server host.
• Protocol. (FTP) To get your page on the server you need to FTP
(file transfer protocol). FTP is a client (you) server
application. If you created your page on your desk top,
obviously to share it you would need to get it on your server.
It’s also used to transfer files between your own pc to someone
else’s computer.
This is a very simplistic overview of what a server host is, but
I hope it will give you a basic idea how it works.
About the author:
Richard Amburn http://www.myspace-host-o
nline.com