Web Hosting for Marketing Decision Makers

Importance

Choosing the web host for your website can seem confusing and difficult at first. What really is shared Hosting, Cloud Hosting, cPanel or GoDaddy?

In this written training, we’ll outline what types of web hosting there are versus a company that provides a web hosting service. We’ll also look at the pros and cons of popular types, some resources that campus has to offer and how to choose the right one for your project.

Target Audience

  • Marketing/User Experience Professionals
  • Web Developers
  • Technology Managers

Definitions and Brand Guidance

As a user, you first connect to the internet and then the internet connects you to the web host or server, The web host contains the website files that are then sent to the internet and appear for the user.

Let’s elaborate on this simplified interaction and dive into each piece:

What is the internet?

Computers connect to each other and various servers via wires, cables, radio waves and other types of networking connectors. These connectors can transmit electronically coded messages to other computers or servers that act as receivers to translate or process the messages for users.

One example of this is an IP address, (see yours using http://checkip.amazonaws.com/). This string of numbers may mean little to most people, but a Domain Name System server can translate the number into desired web locations such as brand.illinois.edu. It then converts it back to numbers so that a computer can deliver you the files within the website. These domain names are different from web hosting, but they are connected. We have more information about campus web domains on the brand website.

Servers are essentially computers with specialized resources. Server resources typically include having a larger storage capacity, more RAM, more efficient processing power (CPU) and operating systems that are more focused on processing computer-language information rather than displaying human readable and interactive elements.  Your home computer is designed for humans to interact with while servers are designed for computers to exchange information with.

At its most basic, the internet is a system that allows a large network of computers and servers to communicate publicly with each other.

What types of web hosting / web servers are available?

There are many types of web hosting. You can choose one type or a combination.

No Service Provider needed:

  1. Shared Hosting
    • Multiple websites share the same server resources.
  2. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
    • A server is split into virtual sections with their own server resources.
  3. Dedicated Server Hosting
    • Exclusive use of an entire physical server.
  4. Cloud Hosting
    • There are multiple cloud options, but this type of hosting will deliver flexible resources that can grow and shrink as needed for your website. You only pay for what you use.
  5. Colocation
    • Renting space in a server room (data center) to set up your own physical server.
  6. Free Hosting
    • Allows individuals and organizations to host a website on the internet at no cost. Usually this means you are required to have ads on your website.

Service Provider needed:

  1. Managed Hosting
    • A service provider handles the management, setup, administration and overall support of a server. This is the most hands-free option.
  2. Reseller Hosting
    • A service provider rents a portion of their resources to you. Usually these come with a more human-friendly interface to interact with the server.

What options does campus offer?

Tech Services has a tool you can use to filter and compare the most popular options: Web Hosting Finder tool

Those options include:

  1. cPanel (Campus Managed Servers)
  2. Publish (PIE)
  3. Sharepoint
  4. Single Page Site Publisher
  5. SitePublish
  6. Sitefinity
  7. Virtual machine on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  8. Virtual machine on campus Virtual Hosting
  9. WebTools (Blogs)
  10. Azure App Service

What external companies offer a web hosting service?

There are many commercial providers that offer web hosting services outside of the popular ones on campus. These include, but are not limited to:

  1. Hostinger
  2. BlueHost
  3. HostGator
  4. SiteGround
  5. GoDaddy
  6. AWS

Still having trouble deciding? Tech Services has an article comparing the campus cPanel to some of these mainstream commercial providers.

Additional Resources

To read more about types of web hosting, check out Hostinger, Types of Web Hosting and Which One is Right for You?

Creating Websites on cPanel

Contact

Sydney Flowers

Front End Web Developer

Strategic Communications and Marketing

sydbeth@illinois.edu