What is Hosting?

What is Hosting?
Websites, like real-life sites, are built on a land. The virtual land required to publish a website is called "hosting". Hosting, which is an English term, can be translated into our language as "web hosting space" or "hosting space".

hosting; It is the service of storing all the files of your web page on a computer 365 days a year and keeping them open to access. These computers are called "servers" or "web servers".

Web servers are machines with more hardware than the computers in your home or office. Servers; They are hosted in places called “datacenters” or “data centers”. data centers; It has a very high-speed internet connection, does not experience power cuts, and is protected against natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes. For this reason, your sites are accessible to visitors under all circumstances.

What Does Hosting Do?
Images, written content, function files, in short, everything necessary for the publication of the site are stored in your hosting account. When visitors type your site's address into their web browser, they are directed to the server where the files of your site are hosted. Without a hosting account, it is not possible to publish your site on the web.

What are the Hosting Types?
Hosting service; They are offered to the market under various names, depending on the size of the resources required for your site, the operating system used by the server, and the type of provisioning.

Hosting Types According to the Operating System Used
Since web servers are actually computers, they need an operating system just like the computers in your home or office. There are two different types of hosting according to the operating system.

Linux Hosting
Also known as "Linux-based hosting". It is the type of hosting where the Linux operating system is used. It is ideal for hosting sites using PHP, MySQL, Perl and Cgi. Also, popular CMS systems like WordPress and OpenCart are best hosted with Linux hosting packages.

Windows Hosting
Also known as “Windows-based hosting”. It is the type of hosting where the Windows operating system is used. It is ideal for hosting sites written in the ASP scripting language. In addition, applications developed on the .NET Framework run on the most stable Windows hosting. The type of hosting where MSSQL and Access database works best is Windows hosting.

Hosting Types by Sharing Type
A site can be hosted on the servers where the host service is provided, or more than one site can be hosted by breaking it up with various methods. Hosting service can be examined in four groups according to the type of sharing.

Dedicated Server
Also called "physical server". It is the type of hosting where the entire server (and therefore all server resources) belongs to the customer. Dedicated server areas can host a site on this server, or they can host multiple sites with various virtualization methods.

VDS
It was created with the abbreviation of the initials of "Virtual Dedicated Server" in English. It can be translated into our language as "Virtualized Physical Server". VDS packages; It allows a physical server to be used as more than one physical server through various programs. If a dedicated server is split into VDS, each VDS will have its own operating system and resources. In other words, some of the VDS accounts on a server may use Linux operating system, while some may use Windows operating system.

In VDS hosting packages, server resources are assigned separately for each VDS. For example, 512 GB of storage can be defined for one of the 2 VDS accounts on a physical server with 2 TB of storage, while 1536 GB of storage can be defined to the other. It is also possible to determine other resources such as traffic and RAM in this way.

VPS
It is named with the abbreviation of the initials of the English “Virtual Private Server”. It is possible to translate it into our language as "Virtualized Private Server". It is created by virtualizing a physical server and separating it into different physical servers, just like in VDS packages. The difference from VDS is the common use of server resources. So in this hosting model, VPS accounts installed on the server; It uses RAM, CPU and other resources in line with its instant needs.

Shared Web Hosting
It is sold under the name of “shared hosting” in the market. As the name suggests, it is used to host many websites on a server. In shared hosting accounts, only one site can be hosted per account. Resources such as CPU and RAM are shared by all sites on the server. For this reason, your site may experience access problems due to excessive resource consumption of other sites on the server. Because it is economical, it is ideal for sites that have few visitors and do not need a lot of resources.

Other Hosting Types
Apart from the hosting types listed above, there are four other hosting services on the market that are sold as “WordPress Hosting”, “Cloud Server”, “Corporate Hosting” and “Email Server”.

WordPress Hosting
It is a type of hosting specially optimized for WordPress use. It is allocated through Linux-based servers. Websites published using WordPress consume server resources too much; This web hosting product has started to be preferred in recent years.

This hosting package is usually sold with WordPress installed. Many applications and free themes that will make your site more functional are also installed as standard. In addition, any updates that occur in the WordPress software itself are automatically received.

WordPress hosting packages usually do not have hosting panel access. When you want to edit WordPress files, the WP-CLI plugin is used. This plugin creates a command line in the admin panel and editing the theme, plugin, system files is done from this command line.

WordPress hosting uses SSD for storage. Since disk read and write capacity is faster than HDD, visitors access the content faster.

The security weaknesses of WordPress are made stronger by various security patches. In addition, different software is used for the caching process, making the site work faster.

It is also possible to use CDN services and SSL certificates in some packages. It is also sold in packages where it is possible to use subdomains.

The first of the two biggest disadvantages; If you want to publish your site in a different script other than WordPress, this is not possible without changing your hosting type. The second disadvantage is that since there is no server access, it does not allow you to make any optimizations you may need on your server.

Cloud Hosting
This technology, which can be translated into our language as "cloud server"; It can be defined as obtaining virtual physical servers from the server pool formed by many physical servers, using the virtualization method.

The biggest advantage of cloud servers; It is the ability to increase or decrease server resources over a panel, as needed. When your needs for system resources change, you don't need to physically make a server change.

Your site will not be adversely affected due to any hardware failure that may occur in cloud servers. Resources are provided from other servers in the server park, instead of the reduced resource due to failure. Therefore, your website will not stay down or lose speed until the related fault is fixed.

The visitor, who wants to access a site hosted on the cloud server, visits the server in the nearest geographical location for access. To explain this situation with an example; Visitors in Greece who want to enter the site on a cloud server created by virtualizing physical servers in Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey; It displays your site from the server in Bulgaria, which is the closest geographical location to it. In this way, the speed of access to your site and the speed of navigation within your site will be higher.

Today, many web hosting companies; It also prefers cloud server solution in VPS packages. In addition, almost all cloud servers use SSD storage technology. Cloud servers created with HDD are relatively slow.

Corporate Hosting
It is a web hosting solution that is generally preferred by businesses with heavy e-mail traffic. The only difference from a normal Linux or Windows hosting service is that different technologies are used to send and receive healthier e-mails. Also, the storage space is larger so that e-mails can be stored in the system without being deleted.

E-Mail Server
It is preferred by businesses with heavy e-mail traffic. No website or other application can be hosted in this type of hosting. The entire server is optimized to provide perfect e-mail traffic.

Mail Hosting
It has the same purpose as an e-mail server, and is one of the most ideal solutions for businesses and institutions with very heavy e-mail traffic. Websites cannot be published in these packages, which are created for e-mail use only.

Services Provided by Hosting Companies
Hosting companies apart from web hosting service; It offers services such as domain sales, domain transfer, ready site sales, SSL certificate sales, server maintenance and optimization.

Depending on the type of hosting package you purchased, some of the above services may be included in the service you purchased. In order not to experience any future grievances in packages that include server maintenance and optimization, the limits of this service should be clearly learned before purchasing.

How is Hosting Security Provided?
Hosting account; It is the most important element necessary for a website to continue its broadcast life uninterruptedly. Therefore, a high level of security must be ensured. It is important to pay attention to the following points in order to ensure the security of the hosting account.

Use passwords that are hard to guess. Create passwords you use using numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, punctuation marks, and special characters.
Do not use the passwords you use in your social media accounts and e-mail accounts in your hosting account. Learning these passwords, which are easier for malicious people to get hold of, means learning the passwords of your hosting account.
Assign different passwords to all areas in your hosting account, such as the database that is accessed with a password.
Renew the passwords of all encrypted areas in your hosting account periodically.
Use the on-screen keyboard when entering your hosting account password.
Make a note of the dates of your access to your hosting account and the edits you made to the files. Check system logs to see if your account has been accessed or edited without your knowledge.
Do not give "chmod 777" to any file on the system unless necessary. The ideal chomod value is “644” and “755”.
Only use plugins, modifications and patches from trusted sources. Do not install software of unknown origin on your hosting account.
Be sure to install antivirus software on your computer. Prevent malicious software that you may unintentionally download to your computer from accessing your information such as passwords.

Which Hosting Company Should I Choose?
What is more important than determining the features of the hosting package you have chosen is "which hosting company should I choose?" to give a healthy answer to the question. Because hosting service; It is a service that is generally used annually, and in some packages monthly, by prepayment.

Like every service, hosting service has a certain cost to the company that provides the hosting plan. Prices in most of the leading companies in the sector are close to each other. For this reason, it is likely that a hosting plan is sold at prices contrary to commercial logic; It carries the risk of not being able to use the service until the end of the service period. Because many of the companies that have just entered the sector are trying to provide services at prices below the cost in order to increase their customer base. If they cannot reach the number of customers they target, they quietly disappear from the sector as they cannot pay the data center expenses. In such a case, the files belonging to your sites cannot be accessed again. This means that both the money you pay and the effort you put into your site are wasted. For this reason, before the price of the hosting service, you should pay attention to how long the company you are going to buy has been in the sector.

Another factor to consider when choosing a hosting company is the after-sales service policy of the business. Because websites are structures that can be accessed 24/7 and therefore technical problems can be experienced 24/7 due to the server. A hosting company that only provides technical support during working hours may cause you to lose visitors as it will provide late support for problems that may occur outside of working hours.

What Services Can Be Taken With Hosting?
Domain Registration
Domain name is one of the indispensable services for publishing a website. This service, which represents your brand on the internet, should be chosen meticulously. Catchy and unpronounceable domain names, unfortunately, will not be sufficiently adopted by users.

If you haven't registered a domain name yet, you can go to our Domain Search page and find the most suitable domain name for you.

Corporate Email
The corporate e-mail service, in addition to being a service with a high quota and frequently backed up, provides you with superior protection with its professional antispam filters. The standard e-mail service included in the hosting packages has a low quota and a standard antispam filter. For this reason, corporate e-mail packages with high quotas and professional antispam features are recommended. You can choose a suitable package for you by examining our Corporate E-mail packages.

SSL Certificate
SSL certificate creates a secure layer between websites and the browser of their visitors, allowing information and data to be exchanged in an encrypted manner. If you have an e-commerce site, you must have a paid SSL certificate. The bank or organization you provide virtualpos demands this, and it will give confidence to the users who will shop on your site. SSL certificates can be obtained for 1 year and 2 years. We recommend you to take a look at the SSL Certificate services we provide.

Choosing Hosting For High-Traffic Websites
The resource usage and need of high-traffic websites are also higher than normal sites. The reason for this is that while each user is making transactions on the site, transactions are also taking place in the software. These transactions also use a certain resource. By source we mean RAM, CPU and IOPS values. The higher the optimization value of your site and the resource values ​​of your hosting package, the more users your site can handle will increase in parallel.

Choosing Hosting For Low-Traffic Websites
Sites with low traffic generally do not require a lot of resources. For this reason, there is no need to go under an unnecessary financial burden by purchasing hosting packages with very high resources. Considering the optimization value of your site, it is possible to save money by purchasing an average package.

Hosting vs. Differences Between Servers
The difference between hosting and server can be explained most clearly as follows. Imagine renting just one room of a house with hosting. Several other people live in the same house with you. Hosting is exactly like that. On a given server, there are several other sites besides your own. It is subject to certain rules and restrictions. However, in server service, the house is entirely yours, you can set your own rules and you are the most authorized person. We have briefly explained the difference with this example. In addition, the server service provides higher performance than the hosting service.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hosting
Does Good Hosting Improve Website Speed?
Of course, we also mentioned it in our article. The processes in the software of your website use a certain system resource. For this reason, the configuration of the server it is located in is also very important. As a result, the resources of the server on your site will be used for the actions to be taken on your site.

Should You Get Technical Support for Hosting?
Providers provide standard support in their hosting packages and there is no paid support service. As Hosting.com.tr, we also provide free 24/7 technical support. When our members have any problems, they can reach us at any time of the day and find solutions to their problems.

Need an Advanced Control Panel?
Control panels are an interface where you can easily perform all the operations you need in hosting packages in general. World-famous control panels are very good in terms of up-to-dateness and stabilization. Here, the habits of the users are also very important. Most users prefer hosting packages with familiar control panels.

How to Prevent Hosting Attacks?
There are many types of hosting attacks. Software-based attacks, that is, attacks based on uploading harmful files, redirecting to another site or corrupting site files due to a flaw in your site software, can unfortunately be prevented by software interventions. However, in attacks such as DDOS, that is, in attacks that are intended to keep the server busy so that it cannot respond, there is protection for such situations in the server's network system and firewall. These are blocked by the technical team of the company that manages your hosting package. There is no intervention by the users.

Is Technical Knowledge Required for Hosting Management?
Yes, a little technical knowledge is required. At the very least, it will be a great advantage if you have information about the operations to be performed on the control panel. However, if you have a problem, you can request help from our technical team.

Domain vs. What are the Differences Between Hosting?
As you know, domain represents the name of your website in the digital world. For example, Hosting.com.tr is a domain name. There are many domain name extensions such as com.tr. Other popular extensions are com, net, org, info.

Hosting is the area where the software to run on your website, images, in other words, all the files that bring your website together are uploaded. Hosting package is a service that directly affects the performance of your website and has features such as various CPU, RAM, disk.

What Should Be Considered When Choosing Hosting?
First of all, a hosting package should be selected according to the software language in which the website you want to publish is written. So, if your site is a PHP coded site, you should choose Linux-based hosting packages, if it is written with asp.net, mvc, .netcore technologies, your Windows-based hosting packages should be your choice.

In addition, in hosting packages with various features, CPU, RAM and disk features should be in line with the needs of your website. If these features are low, the speed of your website will be very slow, and if it is more than normal, this will return to you as an extra expense. Because as the features of hosting packages increase, their prices will increase proportionally.