Wednesday, October 1, 2008

How Can Traffic Affect Your Web Hosting?

By Bob Willis

Web hosting essentially involves a myriad aspects including the quality of customer and technical support, pricing, reliability, programming, add-on features, installation of PHP among other marketing scripts, programming tools and much more.

One of the most important aspects among these is "website traffic" that cannot be overlooked as it can reflect the quality of web hosting that you are receiving. Traffic here in simple terms refers to the amount of bandwidth that your website is entitled to receive.

Bandwidth can be defined as the measurement of data, and the speed at which it flows through the phone lines, cable or DSL lines to transfer information to and from a web site via your computer. What in simple terms is referred to as website traffic is essentially the measurement of this flow of data transfer and in relation to your web site hosting, it is precisely the bandwidth that equates to this measurement.

In terms of website traffic, let us try to try to understand bandwidth and how it can affect your website hosting. If you own a simple text based website, then your website would be able to receive much more traffic even with a low bandwidth allowance as compared to a "graphic intensive" website. This is because the latter would feature large file sizes and therefore a higher amount of bandwidth allowance would be required to transfer from the user's website to the visitor's website.

This can impact and determine the type of hosting package you are required to select. Most hosting packages offer specific amounts of bandwidth and every hosting package is available for a fixed monthly fee. The user therefore needs to ascertain the amount of bandwidth required for his website before he/she selects a hosting package. As mentioned above, a plain text based website would smoothly function even on a small bandwidth allowance whereas a graphic intensive website would require a higher bandwidth allowance.

It is important to take note of the fact that there is an overage charge for additional bandwidth required which does not prove to be a cost-effective strategy when it comes to web hosting. In most cases, the hosting company charges $3 per additional GB.

If you are novice client and are not sure about the amount of bandwidth you require, then is advisable to sign up for the basic hosting package or speak to the support team who would be able to advise on the type of hosting package that best suits your requirements.

New websites usually take some time to grow and gain popularity. This takes active website promotion. Therefore bandwidth should not become an issue at least initially. Ensure that your web host offers convenient upgrades in case your website starts to receive large amounts of traffic. A web host should be able to provide in-depth statistics reports, and monitor your web site activity regularly. Set yourself a budget and exercise good judgment and look for a result-oriented hosting company.


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