Web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that provides individuals or organizations the opportunity to host their own website. For some users, it is the opportunity to store information, images, video, or other content, and make it accessible via the World Wide Web.
Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their customers as well as providing Internet connectivity to the space, typically in a data center.
Shared hosting is where a customer's web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. All of the sites on a shared server share the resources of the server, such as memory or processing speed.
"Overselling" is when a host places more users on a server than it can actually accomodate. The host is betting that not all the customers will use all of their resources at the same time, so they can place more users on every server. HostPC NEVER oversells a server and in fact rarely loads a server past 50% of it's capability.
A domain name is an easy-to-remember name for a web site. Most domains are actually stored as IP addresses (such as 12.345.678.90) that computers recognize easily, but we use memorable names for them (like HostPC.com).
Before you register, you have to check that someone else isn't using the name you want already. HostPC provides a domain name lookup at http://www.hostpc.com/whois.php Just type in the domain you're interested in (like hostpc.com) and the page will tell you if your domain is available or not. Then there will be links to register if you're already a customer of HostPC or not.
But you don't have to use our services. There are many domain registry services available and you should compare prices and services before you buy.
The price of the domain registration is normally separate from the price of the hosting for your web site.
Disk space is the size your website can be. Every letter and image on your website has to be stored somewhere on your web host's server. Each letter is one byte, and a megabyte is roughly one million bytes. HTML pages are usually very small, but it is the extra images, scripts, and even databases that can take up large amounts of disk space.
Bandwidth, or data transfer (normally the same thing), is the amount of data the server will allow your site to send in a month. Transfer is usually measured in gigabytes - billions of bytes. Once you go over your monthly limit, a host may either shut your site down for the remainder of the month or it can charge you 'overage.' At HostPC you can monitor your bandwidth in your control panel.
No. So long as your domain is registered in your name (as HostPC does and as it should be), you can simply update your namservers (from where you manage your domain names) to that of your new host. If you are a HostPC customer and you did register with us, we can update your nameservers for you.
Uptime it is the amount of time your site is online or "up" throughout the entire month. HostPC offers you the ability to monitor and see the status of the server your site is on at all times through our "Server Uptime Report" link on the home page.
Perfect uptime would be 100%, but because things can break, HostPC offers 99.9% uptime guarantees. This means that if your site is not accessible for more than 43 minutes in a single month, we will compensate you.
Perhaps you could, but there are a number of reasons why people do not.
First, most Internet Service Providers do not allow you to use your internet connection for web hosting and most likely they will simply close your account if you do so.
Second, can you guarantee your site will be online ALL the time? Is your home computer fast enough, large enough, and have enough memory to be a web server AND do the work you need it to do at the same time? And web hosts have redundant, or multiple, connections so they are not dependent on one to stay online all the time.
Third, every web server faces the issue of hackers. They work to break into and take over your computer all the time. Do you know how to prevent them and fix your computer when something goes wrong? With paid hosting it is the web host company's job to keep the servers running and fixing the problems when they happen.
Any business that operates is doing so to make money. They have to turn a profit. The Internet is full of failed hosting companies that simply shut down and disappeared overnight. One of the more famous companies provided an annual fee of $3.90 to host your site! Just remember that any host has to make a profit to continue operating and paying the bills for the servers your site is located at.
Files must be transferred to the web server via File Transport Protocol (FTP). We offer free flash movie files showing you how to use different FTP programs at http://www.hostpc.com/support/
You have unlimited access to your site 24 hours a day. Using FTP you can upload your web site information and data at any time and make as many updates as you wish to.
Orders for domain name accounts will be configured within 4 to 6 hours. Once an account is set up a welcome notice will be sent you via the off-site email address you supplied when ordering. This email will include your userid, password, and FTP host-name. You can begin uploading files to your new web site immediately. You will be given a temporary URL to access your site via the web until your new domain registers, or is transferred over to HostPC.
Most web documents should be placed in your /public_html folder. You may create sub folders to store your images or other files in, but the first folder a browser looks for is /public_html.
Check your filenames for capitalization. HostPC's webservers are CaSe SeNsItIvE, which means that INDEX.HTML is not the same as index.html.
Again, check your filenames for capitalization and/or unusual characters. Be sure you have removed, renamed or overwritten the original index.html file that is shown when you order your web site.
Index files are the first files a browser looks for when it visits your web site. The following files will load automatically, when a directory URL is requested. They are listed in the order a browser looks for them:
We have a flash demo movie to show you how, step by step. Pause, rewind, or use it as often as necessary: Creating a POP mail account.
View our flash tutorial on Creating an autoresponder
To set up the most popular software, visit our Flash Tutorial Page and scroll down to where it says, "Email Setup (With Authentication) Flash Demos" Does our account have webmail?
All our hosting plans come with WebMail using SquirrelMail and RoundCube.
You may login through http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail/
Mail Transfer Agents (MTA) on the internet will continue to try deliver mail to your domain if your server is down, or if the domain is temporarily over quota or unreachable. Some MTAs will notify the sender if they are unable to deliver email within an hour but they will continue to retry to deliver the email. Most will continue to try and deliver for 3 to 7 days. If after that time, the email is still undeliverable, the MTA will give up and notify the sender of the failure.
