A shared web hosting service is a

web hosting service A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

where many

websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...

reside on one web server connected to the Internet. The overall cost of server maintenance is spread over many customers. By using shared hosting, the website will share a physical server with one or more other websites.

Description

The service must include

system administration A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to en ...

since it is shared by many users; this is a benefit for users who do not want to deal with it, but a hindrance to power users who want more control. In general shared hosting will be inappropriate for users who require extensive software development outside what the hosting provider supports. Almost all applications intended to be on a standard web server work fine with a shared

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web ...

service. But on the other hand, shared hosting is cheaper than other types of hosting such as dedicated server hosting. Shared hosting usually has usage limits and hosting providers should have extensive reliability features in place. Shared hosting services typically offer basic web statistics support, email and

webmail Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Examples of webmail providers are 1&1 Ionos, AOL Mail, G ...

services, auto script installations, updated PHP and MySQL, basic after-sale technical support that is included with a monthly subscription. It also typically uses a web-based control panel system. Most of the large hosting companies use their own custom-developed control panel. Control panels and web interfaces can cause controversy however since

companies sometimes sell the right to use their control panel system to others. Attempting to recreate the functionality of a specific control panel is common, which leads to many

lawsuits - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil acti ...

over patent infringement. In shared hosting, the provider is generally responsible for managing servers, installing server software, security updates, technical support, and other aspects of the service. Most servers are based on the Linux operating system and

LAMP (software bundle) LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) is an acronym denoting one of the most common software stacks for many of the web's most popular applications. However, LAMP now refers to a generic software stack model and its components are largel ...

. Some providers offer Microsoft Windows-based or FreeBSD-based solutions. Server-side facilities for either operating system (OS) have similar functionality (for example: MySQL (database) and many server-side programming languages (such as the widely used PHP programming language) under Linux, or the proprietary SQL Server (database) and

ASP.NET ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name sta ...

programming language under Microsoft Windows. There are thousands of shared hosting providers in the world. They range from "mom-and-pop shops" and small design firms to multimillion-dollar providers with hundreds of thousands of customers. A large portion of the shared web hosting market is driven through

pay per click Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is usually ...

(PPC) advertising or affiliate programs while some are purely non-profit. Shared web hosting can also be done privately by sharing the cost of running a server in a

colocation centre A colocation center (also spelled co-location, or colo) or "carrier hotel", is a type of data centre where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling, and ...

; this is called cooperative hosting.

Implementation

Shared web hosting can be accomplished in two ways: name-based and

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. I ...

-based (IP-based), although some control panels allow a mix of name-based and IP-based on the one server.

IP-based

In IP-based virtual hosting, also called dedicated IP hosting, each virtual host has a different IP address. The web server is configured with multiple physical network interfaces or virtual network interfaces on the same physical interface. The web server software uses the IP address the client connects to in order to determine which website to show the user.

Name-based

In name-based virtual hosting, also called shared IP hosting, the virtual hosts serve multiple hostnames on a single machine with a single

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

. This is possible because when a web browser requests a resource from a web server using HTTP/1.1 it includes the requested hostname as part of the request. The server uses this information to determine which website to show the user.

Understanding DNS and name servers

DNS stands for " Domain Name System". The domain name system acts like a large telephone directory and in that it's the master database, which associates a domain name such as ''www.wikipedia.org'' with the appropriate IP number. Consider the IP number something similar to a phone number: When someone calls www.wikipedia.org, the ISP looks at the DNS server, and asks "how do I contact www.wikipedia.org?" The DNS server responds, for example, "it can be found at: 91.198.174.192.". As the Internet understands it, this can be considered the

phone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

for the server that houses the website. When the domain name is registered/purchased on a particular registrar's "name server", the DNS settings are kept on their server, and in most cases point the domain to the name server of the hosting provider. This name server is where the IP number (currently associated with the domain name) resides.

References