Title: A Guide To Virtual Web Hosting Word Count: 580 Summary: What is virtual web hosting?

When you visit a website, what you are looking at on your web browser is simply a web page that has been downloaded from the virtu al web server onto your web browser. A website is usually made up of many web p ages. These web pages are made up of texts and graphic images. All of these we b pages must be stored on the virtual web servers so that users who are online c an visit your website. If you are planning to own a new website, you will nee... Keywords: hosting, virtual web hosting, web hosting providers, virtual private servers, vp s, php, mysql Article Body: What is virtual web hosting? When you visit a website, what you are looking at on your web browser is simply a web page that has been downloaded from the virtu al web server onto your web browser. A website is usually made up of many web p ages. These web pages are made up of texts and graphic images. All of these we b pages must be stored on the virtual web servers so that users who are online c an visit your website. If you are planning to own a new website, you will need to host it on a virtual web server. When your website gets placed on the virtual web server, then onlin e users can browse your website on the Internet. Companies that provide the web servers that will host your website are called virtual web hosting providers. A well-established virtual web hosting provider can easily host up to thousands of websites. Therefore, a virtual web hosting company needs many web servers or computers to store the websites. All of these web servers are linked to the In ternet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a data center. Ther e must be a guarantee that all of the web servers are safe, secure and are fully operational at all times. Therefore, a data center is a physically secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, redundant power backup, computer data backup, virus detections, and complete disaster recovery capabilities. There are four main kinds of virtual web hosting companies available each having different characteristics. They can be organized into the following categories : 1. Shared hosting In this type of virtual hosting, many websites are sharing space on the same web servers. Depending on what kind of virtual web host it is, a physical web serv er can host up to a thousand different websites at one time. Since the physical web server is shared by many websites, the virtual web hosting provider can aff ord to offer low hosing prices. Websites on this shared virtual hosting plan wo uld have to be satisfied to accept slower server response time. These plans nor mally start at $5 - $20 a month. 2. Dedicated hosting

Dedicated virtual web hosting assigns a certain web server to be used by a singl e customer. Since a dedicated virtual web server is allocated to only one custo mer, he/she has the option to host either single or multiple websites, handle gr eater site traffic, modify the software configuration, and scale the bandwidth i f necessary. Dedicated virtual hosting is quite a bit more expensive and starts at $50 a month and can easily range from $200 - $500 a month. This is often us ed by high traffic and very important websites. 3. Co-location hosting With virtual dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the providers and cust omers only rent the web server. However, in co-location hosting, the client own s the web server hardware. The customer has full control, therefore, over their web server and benefits from the 24/7 server monitoring and maintenance that is provided by the secure data center. Co-location virtual hosting can range from $500 - $1000 a month depending on the rack space that is required and the month ly bandwidth. 4. Reseller hosting In virtual reseller hosting, a web hosting provider will offer web server storag e to a third party at a discount price. The third party then resells the web se rver storage to their clients. Resellers are usually web consultants who includ e web developers, web designers, or a system integration company who resells the web hosting as an add-on service to augment their other range of services.