So you have decided that you want to start a website, or even an e-commerce site. You have managed the site design, and have even purchased a domain name, but now what? You will never get any visitors to your site if it isnt accessible via the web. The only way to do that is by using a server. The server will maintain a permanent connection with the web and on the server will be stored all the information about your website. In effect, users will come onto the server access your website and then when they decide to move to another website they will access information from another server. So, the real question is, what type of server do you need?
For all individual users and most small e-commerce users, virtual web hosting is the way to go. The other option, having a dedicated server, means that you will actually go out and purchase a big and very expensive piece of hardware that will be used for your website alone. Virtual web hosting is, essentially, renting a small piece of someone elses server. Virtual web hosting which is also called shared hosting, because it usually means many different sites are all located on a single server, and is vastly more economical...