What is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is a service which allocates space for customers to showcase their websites on computer servers that are connected to the Internet 24/7.

Servers are powerful computers that have extremely large hard drives, or an array of hard drives. Space is then rented to those who want a “website presence” on the Internet.

Every server on the Internet has a unique numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address. You can think of servers as apartment buildings with unique addresses. Each apartment unit within each building is equivocal to space rented out for individual websites. And like real apartment buildings, each unit also has an address based on “the building” in which it is located.

When you rent a space on a server then, you’re setting up house on the Internet. You can be reached by a unique address (the website address), which is based on the server’s address.

There are many different types of web hosting. Most packages come with certain capabilities for users. Examples are scripts that allow interactive functions, forms, bulletin boards, guest books, etc. For professional purposes there are also Web hosting services that offer commercial packages that bundle business tools, like point of sales packages and credit card processing.

Prices for Web hosting vary from free to hundreds of dollars a year, depending on your needs. Web hosting for personal websites that don’t require any special tools and have low traffic (not a high number of viewings) can be found easily for free.

Free Web hosting is convenient but has its drawbacks. Usually it will be required that you allow the server to run advertisements on your website. The advertisements are normally banner ads — a banner at the top of the page for example — and sometimes pop-up ads as well. Most free hosting services offer an alternative pay-plan to have the advertisements removed.

Another consideration is that free services normally allocate your website address as an extension of the server’s address. For example: www.thewebhost.com/yourwebsite. If you want an address like: www.yourwebsite.com, you will have to pay to register your own domain name.

There are other considerations when looking for a Web host aside from price. Some hosting services have policies that restrict certain content, scripting languages, functions or uses. You should also read the privacy policy of any hosting service that you are considering, to see how they will use the personal information you provide to them in setting up your account.

Web hosting service

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called co-location.

Service scope

The scope of hosting services varies widely. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web “as is” or with little processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service free to their subscribers. People can also obtain Web page hosting from other, alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or cheap. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense.

Single page hosting is generally sufficient only for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. For e-commerce, SSL is also highly recommended.

The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce). They are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company.

Web design

Web design is the skill of creating presentations of content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, microblogging clients and RSS readers.

Web design is a kind of graphic design intended for development and styling of objects of the Internet’s information environment to provide them with high-end consumer features and aesthetic qualities. The offered definition separates web design from web programming, emphasizing the functional features of a web site, as well as positioning web design as a kind of graphic design.(source: Denis Borodayev. Web site as a Graphic Design Object. Monograph. (Бородаев Д.В. Веб-сайт как объект графического дизайна. Монография. – Х.: Септима ЛТД, 2006. – 288 с. – Библиогр.: с.262-286. ISBN 966-674-026-5)

The process of designing web pages, web sites, web applications or multimedia for the Web may utilize multiple disciplines, such as animation, authoring, communication design, corporate identity, graphic design, human-computer interaction, information architecture, interaction design, marketing, photography, search engine optimization and typography.

• Markup languages (such as HTML, XHTML and XML)
• Style sheet languages (such as CSS and XSL)
• Client-side scripting (such as JavaScript)
• Server-side scripting (such as PHP and ASP)
• Database technologies (such as MySQL and PostgreSQL)
• Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and Silverlight)

Web pages and web sites can be static pages, or can be programmed to be dynamic pages that automatically adapt content or visual appearance depending on a variety of factors, such as input from the end-user, input from the Webmaster or changes in the computing environment (such as the site’s associated database having been modified).

With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

Internet marketing

Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products, or, services over the Internet.

The Internet has brought and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both, in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it not only refers to , such as, the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media, but also it includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet including design, development, advertising, and sales.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times, working with comScore, published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting data upward of 2,500 times on average per user per month.

What is Internet Marketing?

Depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the Internet and who try to sell you some form of “Internet marketing program”.

Today, Internet marketing, or online marketing, is evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of increasing sales – even if your business is done completely online, partly online, or completely offline. The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company’s overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company of course, but as a rule, Internet marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company’s marketing mix. For some online businesses, it is the only form of marketing being practiced.

Internet Marketing Objectives

Essentially, Internet marketing is using the Internet to do one or more of the following:

• Communicate a company’s message about itself, its products, or its services online.
• Conduct research as to the nature (demographics, preferences, and needs) of existing and potential customers.
• Sell goods, services, or advertising space over the Internet.

Internet Marketing Components

Components of Internet marketing (or online marketing) may include:

• Setting up a website , consisting of text, images and possibly audio and video elements used to convey the company’s message online, to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company’s products and/or services. The website may or may not include the ability to capture leads from potential customers or directly sell a product or service online. Websites can be the Internet equivalents of offline brochures or mail order catalogs and they are a great way to establish your business identity.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is marketing a website online via search engines, either by improving the site’s natural (organic) ranking through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads or purchasing pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listings in website directories, which are similar to offline yellow page listings.
• Email marketing, which is a method of distributing information about a product or service or for soliciting feedback from customers about a product or service through Email. Email addresses of customers and prospective customers may be collected or purchased. Various methods are used, such as the regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company’s product or services. Email marketing is essentially the online equivalent of direct mail marketing.
• Banner advertising, which is the placement of ads on a website for a fee. The offline equivalent of this form of online marketing would be traditional ads in newspapers or magazines.
• Online press releases, which involve placing a newsworthy story about a company, its website, its people, and/or its products/services with on online wire service.
• Blog marketing, which is the act of posting comments, expressing opinions or making announcements in a discussion forum and can be accomplished either by hosting your own blog or by posting comments and/or URLs in other blogs related to your product or service online.
• Article marketing, which involves writing articles related to your business and having them published online on syndicated article sites. These articles then have a tendency to spread around the Internet since the article services permit re-publication provided that all of the links in the article are maintained. Article marketing can result in a traffic boost for your website, and the distribution of syndicated articles can promote your brand to a wide audience.

Internet Marketing and Home Business

Of all of the components of Internet marketing, prospective customers and clients expect a business to have a website. In fact, not having one could raise a red flag to a prospect. Online usage has become so pervasive today, many prospects might easily choose to do business with a company that they can get up-to-date information on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Even a business that only has very local customers, such as a single location restaurant or shoe store can benefit from having a website and engaging in online marketing. And, those businesses whose customers are not restricted to a geographical area might have a difficult time finding an alternate method of attracting customers that offers the reasonably low expense and worldwide reach of a Web presence.

Because of the “virtual” nature of most home businesses, websites, if not an absolute necessity, can certainly provide benefits to a home business operator. Since most home-based businesses don’t have a physical location, a website provides an inexpensive means for prospects to get to know what you do or what you sell and can even be a “storefront” for selling goods and services directly.

The Internet has greatly enabled home businesses to prosper because of the reasonably low cost to start and maintain a web presence. Therefore, Internet marketing should be part of your business plan and your marketing strategy.

Next page: Strategic Internet Marketing – Developing Internet Marketing Strategies