This article is based on the concept of having your own place on the web. If you are new to this concept, then it will be helpful for you to understand some of the basics of owning a web place.Web hosting is basically divided into two main categories, which will be described in this article in a detailed fashion. The two main categories are as follows:

1. Dedicated Hosting.

2. Shared Hosting. (It is divided into two types, i.e. paid and free sharing. In normal scenario, you cannot get dedicated hosting for free.)

Now, before going into any more types of hosing, let’s go over some basic terminology. The terminology commonly used in web hosting is described as follows:

Bandwidth: It is the amount of data, which your site can transfer in a specified period of time and it is referred to as “transfer”. When your site is viewed on the internet, it is getting downloaded from the server and during this process the bandwidth is being used up.

Storage: The measure of the hard drive space, which the website is allowed to take up on a server, is known as storage.

Now, let’s talk about dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting or you can say dedicated server is where the website gets an entire server for itself and you are entitled to all the resources of that server. The hard drive space and the bandwith is owned by you as well, including the memory required for processing and etc.

Dedicated hosting is a must for high traffic concentrated websites, but shared hosting usually suits the individual involved in small businesses.

Shared hosting is a kind of hosting, where a hosting company publishes your website on a server with web sites from other customers. The hosting provider, whom you buy the hosting service from, will give you monthly, quarterly, or yearly limits for bandwidth, storage, email accounts and etc.

Now, depending on the server where your site is published and the hosting provider, there are times when the server gets crowded and your site becomes passive. Free hosting is also called shared hosting, where you get free web space to publish your website. The classic example of free hosting is geocities, where you get free web space to publish your website, but the web space is quite limited, of course.

You can sometimes earn a great free hosting account by making posts in forums and such, but in my point of view paid hosting is far much better than shared or free hosting.