Web Hosting Explained: Web hosting is like renting a locker. You are renting a piece of space for your possessions from a larger piece of space that holds things for everyone. In time, your possessions may grow to a size too big for your locker so you have to upgrade to a bigger size locker. If you collect enough stuff eventually you will need your own facility to house all of it. That is basically how Web hosting works. You rent a piece of server space on a Web server that you share with several other Web sites. This is called a "shared hosting plan". If your site is busy you will be continually adding new pages and collecting more and more user data.

Eventually the size of the data you have collected becomes too big for the space you are renting. You must upgrade to a bigger shared plan. As your site continues to grow you eventually become too big for this plan so you must upgrade again. Eventually you make it to the ranks of "dedicated servers." Dedicated servers are entirely dedicated to your site. You do not share them with anyone. They are expensive and should not be needed for new Web sites unless you are going on a mass multi-thousand dollar marketing blitz to launch your site.

Most Website owners do not make it out of shared land. There are two key factors that determine the size of the hosting plan that you need.

Space
It takes a lot of content to fill a Web directory. Most people (and I do mean most) will never run out of space. Hosting companies market space like PC makers market hard drives on new computers. They offer you a ton more than you will ever need in an effort to make their packages look more appealing. If you have a Website that deals in imagery or your Website has features that allow a user to build their own Web page or upload their own photos then you may need more Web space one day. As a general rule of thumb however; the common Web site owner will never run out of space.

Bandwidth
You get an allotment of bandwidth with your hosting plan. Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that your site is allowed usually measured per month. People often refer to this as "the pipe". The pipe can only handle so much traffic before a larger pipe is needed. If your traffic numbers keep growing then the pipe will become too small and you will to have to upgrade your hosting plan. Again, this is an area that is rarely exceeded although it is possible. If you are service streaming video or Websites with large picture content in conjunction with high traffic numbers then you could run out of pipe.

If you are looking to host a Maine Web FX content management system, it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you pick one of these plans for your hosting needs. These hosting servers have already been pre-configured to handle the programming and data load associated with such CMS sites. In addition, Maine Web FX Hosting Servers have a guaranteed server uptime of 99 percent running on UNIX and Apache servers that deliver high content retrieval at blistering speeds.