Melkio.com :: Web Design :: Web Hosting :: Graphic Design

The pendulum has swung. At the height of the Internet-crazy 1990′s, everybody felt that they had to have a website…yet almost nobody knew what to do with one when they got it. Now the technology has enabled a level of application and user-friendliness that would have been unthinkable five or ten years ago, and people keep coming up with new ways to make the Internet work for them.

Web hosting has definitely changed in that time. For one thing, the amount of space needed by increasing file sizes and high-speed streaming demand has forced servers to get bigger and bigger…and, on the opposite end, the rise of social networking has taken much of the impetus from ‘personal’ self-created and self-maintained web sites.

Meanwhile, an entirely new age is dawning (if you listen to the constant hype about things that have been ‘right around the corner’ for the last few years) with Web 2.0 and cloud computing. What will the ‘new’ Internet be like when we’re all on and offline connected all and none of the time?

Undoubtedly, much will go unchanged. After all, the basic dilemma in web hosting (shared or dedicated?) hasn’t changed much, except in the details, for the last five, ten, or fifteen years. The newer options (virtual dedicated, hybrid, grid, clustered, et ceterea) add new dimensions to the debate, but the prime needs are the same as they ever were: security, stability, and scalability.

Security is self-evident; you must make certain that your data is as well-protected as possible, while still being accessible to the outside World Wide Web.

Stability is always a factor, but it is encouraging that our standards are consistently going up. A decade ago, we may have considered a web host attractive if it offered 85% uptime; now, the best hosts regularly claim 99% – 100% (though some of those numbers may be misleading at times).

Finally, scalability…while that word may not have been around five or ten years ago, the concept is as timeless as conflicts over resources. How much room do we have to expand? What do we do when we hit the ceiling?

These and other subjects will be covered in the next few pages.