Web : hosting

Hosting is defined as the storing of your web site online. Although in reality it is much more.

The following are all factors that may add to the cost of hosting.

• The services your website uses: eg database, email, SSH
• How much traffic your web site generates: Bandwidth in New Zealand is metered and most ISP's have defined acceptable limits for a web site.
• What specification of server your website is stored on. Is it the latest quad core? How much memory does it have?
• The platform. Is it PHP or ASP that you require?
• The size of the website. Although most will not be affected by this, ISP's have defined acceptable limits on web site physical storage.
• Contention ratios. With the advent of virtualisation many web hosts are run on the same computer. You obviously wont get the best performance from your site if it is run on the same server as 100 other sites.