Definition

Shared or virtual hosting is a type of hosting when a lot of sites are placed on one web server. Each site gets its part of disk space, CPU time and other services.

Each site has his own domain name but one IP is divided on several sites.

Shared hosting is the most popular type of hosting nowadays. There are several causes why it is so widespread and popular: Shared hosting is the cheapiest solution for small or new websites. All hosters start from virtual hosting. It is easy!

Who is it for

• Newbies – if you decided to setup your first site in the Internet to learn the basics of the hosting sphere.
• Small business – if you want to create a simple website which will not require a big amount of resources.
• Small projects – if you have a project but free hosting doesn’t suit you.
• Professionals – if they want to test a script or technology.

How to choose a shared hosting plan – tips and tricks

The first thing you should do is to create a site on the local machine (e.g. your PC). What for? Because you should understand which hosting plan is right for you.

So you have your site up. Than you should choose a hosting platform: UNIX hosting or Windows hosting. If you use ASP, .Net and other specific Windows technologies you’d better use UNIX hosting but in any other case can use Windows hosting.

It is easy to understand how much disk space you need: just “weigh” your site and add 3-6 MB.

Future traffic can be defined in such a way: take an average size of the single page (including graphics, scripts and styles), multiply the total to the number of expected page views per month, and add 1-2GB. For example, if an average syze of the single page if 20KB and you are planning to get 1234 thousand page views per month you need at least 24-27GB to make everything work well. Actually you need less traffic because static pages and images are often cached on client’s proxy servers and computers. Sometimes hosting providers offer a test month. If you order hosting for the first time we suggest you take advantage of this attractive offer.

You should avoid a typical mistake – choosing a hosting plan with a lot of traffic, huge disk space and heaps of useless additional services. Don’t pay for junk!