Shared Hosting

Shared web hosting cuts costs by serving multiple domains on a single hosting machine. One computer can hold hundreds - even thousands - of small and medium-sized websites.

Each user gets complete access to their own folders and files, but they can't log in to or make changes to other folders even though they're hosted on the same machine.

The advantages are clear: Full function web hosting at a discount price.

Most shared hosting providers support the latest network software, database management, and content management systems. Make sure to check with your host to ensure that the software you want to use to build your site are available.

Here are some popular and free platforms that can be used to quickly build websites:

Blogs

• Wordpress


• Blogger


• Joomla


• Drupal

Forums

• PHPBB


• Simple Machine Forums (SMF)

Social Sites

• Pligg

Unfortunately, there are some limitations to what you can do with shared hosting. The most common problem is when a dynamic site built out of PHP or another scripting language starts getting a lot of traffic. If the content isn't cached, but rather generated every time the page is requested, that site can start to affect the speed and performance of other sites on the same server. Taking up too many resources can lead to a hosting account suspensions. Getting too much traffic is the most common problem associated with shared hosting - but the good news is that by the time you have to worry about that, you should be making enough money to upgrade!

Dreamhost

Dreamhost is a great place to get started. They offer coupon codes and discounts to help an always great price get better, and they also provide high end VPS servers for when your website grows up and needs some more resources like memory and processing. Check out this Dreamhost review to get a better idea of the service.

Bluehost

Bluehost is fast and reliable, but their prices are static and they only offer a single shared hosting plan. They are working on the upgraded VPS accounts, we'll have to be content for now with one of the highest quality shared hosts around. Get more info here at my complete Bluehost review.

If your website is becoming an essential part of your monthly budget - like the mortgage, insurance, and grocery bills rely on it - then you should probably consider upgrading to something a little more reliable than a shared hosting plan. While shared hosting can usually handle a whole lot of traffic these days, there's no saying when a bad apple on your machine will ruin the fun for everyone and take your websites down with them.

Another reason to consider an upgrade to private or virtually private servers is because you need more security. Unfortunately, vulnerabilities in a machine can effect multiple users, and it might not be something that was your fault that put your data in a compromised position.

Finally, one of the most rewarding reasons to upgrade to a VPS plan is to get some more hands on experience in developing and deploying a new server. A lot of things that sound extremely complicated start to clear up a bit once you've actually gone in and worked on them!