If you have already registered your domain name, the next step is to get a web hosting for your website. Web hosting is a service, which provides space for your website on internet. If you want your website to publish online, then you will have to get web hosting service.
In a web hosting service, your website is stored in high powered computers called web servers, which are connected to a high speed network and they are powered-on 24/7. While purchasing a web hosting service, you rent a space for your website on these servers.
There are basically three types of web hosting −
Shared Hosting − In this type of web hosting, a single server hosts multiple websites, sometimes thousands of them. Each account on this server has certain limits on using disk space to store websites, databases and bandwidth. This is the amount of data transferred through your website. This type of hosting is cheap and suitable for small and medium websites.
Virtual Private Servers − In this type of hosting, a Linux Server is divided into several parts and each part acts as a different server, each server has some limited resources given. In this, the VPS administrator has root access to his VPS and can then host single or many websites according to his need. These type of hosting is recommended for medium and large websites. Cost of VPS is higher than Shared Hosting, but lower then Dedicated Hosting.
Dedicated Server − In this type of hosting, a whole server is rented to the user, who can host a large website on this server or can use it to host multiple websites in this server, the server admin can create multiple VPS. Cost of dedicated hosting is much higher and it requires a server admin to manage this type of hosting.
If your website is new and it is not expecting much resource usage, then you can go for shared hosting. You can purchase shared hosting for hosting one website or multiple websites according to your need. In this tutorial, we will learn about hosting a website using cPanel, hence it is recommended that you purchase the hosting that comes with cPanel.