Web Hosting Options

There are lots of options for Web hosting. Basically it breaks down into a few categories:

• Shared hosts: You get an account on a single server, shared with a bunch of other people. You might be sharing the same IP address with others. You don't control the server software, and you have no admin privileges such as the ability to reboot the machine (since that would take all your neighbors down with you).
• Virtual Private Servers (VPS): You get a virtual machine all to yourself. The physical hardware is still shared with other users but they are running in their own virtual machines. Everyone gets their own IP addresses(es). This is a lot like having your own physical server. You load and administer the software on it, you can reboot it etc.. The only thing you can't do is reboot the real physical hardware. These systems run on special Operating Systems (or "Hypervisors" if you prefer) such as Xen. The hosting provider will have some special software that can remotely connect you to the console port of the virtual machine.
• Dedicated Servers: Now you get your own physical box, located in the hosting provider's data center. You could either be renting the box itself, or you could own it. The hosting provider has a Terminal Server setup so you can remotely gain access to the console port of the machine. Now when you reboot, you are rebooting the physical iron.
• Cloud hosting: This is the new buzzword and I'm really not sure I know what it means yet. You've got services like Google's App Engine, and Amazon's S3 (elastic cloud storage), but then the hosting providers such as Rackspace and 1and1 also offer what the call "Cloud Hosting". These seem similar to VPS, in that you choose to configure a virtual server with a certain amount of RAM and disk space. Rackspace charges you "by the hour", and based on Bandwidth you end up using. 1and1 says you can change your server configuration at any time during the contract period (e.g. add more CPUs, more disk etc). I don't see much difference between these and the VPS providers like Slicehost (which is now owned by Rackspace), and Linode.
• Do it yourself at home: In this case you own your server and it's at your home (or business). You need one or more static IP addresses, and a connection to the internet that is approved for web hosting. If you try to do this over your cable modem, DSL, or Verizon FIOS service, you might find that your internet provider blocks port 80, or otherwise does not approve of you running a web server. Those types of connections are also typically asymmetrical, so you have a fast download speed from the Internet, but a much slower path from your server to the Internet. What you really need is something like a a dedicated T1 or Sonet OC3 (fiber) connection, which could cost you anywhere from $200 to several thousand dollars a month.

Some CSS...

• How do you get an unordered list with a star instead of the usual bullet? I created a class called "starlist" and placed the bitmap into the background of each li. Top margin for some separation, left padding so that the bitmap has room to go on the left.
  

  .starlist {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin:0; padding:0;
  }
  .starlist li {
    background: url(images/star.gif) 0 6px no-repeat;
    margin-top: 20px;
    padding-left: 20px; 
  }  

• How about the image captioning with rollover effect? I made the image caption using my tool.
  

  <script type='text/javascript'>
  $(window).load(function(){ $('#fvjpg').cssBakeryCaption({'opacity':'0.5','center':true,
  'centerCaption':true,'round':true,'hide':true,'color':'white','bgcolor':'black'}); });
  </script>
  
  <img id='fvjpg' style='visibility:hidden' src='images/fv.jpg' alt='Another warm, nice day
  September 2010 © Copyright www.cssrule.com All Rights Reserved' />