Is cloud hosting necessary for bloggers

Hosting companies have started unveiling their Cloud Hosting plans. From a bloggers perspective, for a low traffic blog or a beginners blog is mostly hosted on Shared Linux Hosting which is the best value hosting plan. Cloud Hosting is now placed at the top end of the hosting plans. Plus there is this tricky criteria of CPU and Memory allocation as per the plan chosen. So do bloggers need to migrate to Cloud Hosting.

Understanding Shared Linux Hosting

Shared Linux Hosting is the easiest way to mass host number of websites on a single server. The server in question is a Linux based Web Server. A Web Server is a machine or a computer which does the job of hosting a website or serving web pages to visitors on the Internet.

A single Linux Web Server can host multiple WordPress type websites. The upper limit is only the hardware capacity of the server. The resources used by blogs with light traffic is very less. Hence hosting companies try to pack as many number of blogs on one server.

Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server

As traffic increases, so does the resource usage increase on your shared server. This is the time when you get a call from your hosting company asking you to upgrade your plan or best go for a dedicated server. Buying a dedicated server is still very expensive. So as an intermediary, you can also buy a VPS or Virtual Private Server. This technology uses virtualization to divided a physical server into multiple virtual servers. Each virtual server can then be sold to each individual client. The client gets full access and freedom as if it is working on a dedicated server. Each virtual server shares resources from the physical server where it resides.

What is a cloud

The definition of cloud has changed over the years. Any data which is stored in the local hard disk is local storage. If the data is stored some place else on the network it is called as cloud storage or only Cloud. But this is the old definition. Now in recent times instead of providing just storage, cloud offers you a complete computer with the Operating System and Software Tools. This is cloud computing.

What is cloud computing

A photographer wants to use Adobe Photoshop to edit images. For this a PC with Windows OS and Photoshop is required to be installed. All this hardware and software has to be purchased and licensed.

Next Adobe decides to upgrade the Photoshop software to include revolutionary features. Our photographer has to upgrade to the latest version to remain in contention with his employers and clients. He pays for the software upgrades and to upgrade the hardware which has become obsolete with the newer version of Photoshop.

Next year Microsoft decides to upgrade. He again has to invest in the hardware upgrades to his PC. After the necessary upgrades to RAM and Processor, he discovers that there are some compatibility issue and Adobe Photoshop wont start. The troubles of our photographer have just begun.

Adobe Photoshop CC

CC stand for Creative Cloud. Here our photographer moves his PC, OS and tools, all to Adobe premises. Adobe takes care of maintaining the hardware, software and its upgrades. Our photographer gets access to his work though a common web browser. All his work is saved on the PC on Adobe premises. He can access his work from his notebook, tablet or mobile phone. He can also share his work with his team. The place where the hardware and software reside is called the cloud.

For a detailed article on cloud computing check out the following URL

Everything…..As A Service : Cloud Services

So what is cloud hosting

For shared hosting, servers are kept at the hosting company location. You are accessing the Cpanel remotely. So it is the cloud. Not really.

The servers provided by your hosting company only provide you with a Linux Server configured as Web Server. The client has to install any additional tools or software as required.

Cloud Hosting on the other hand will not only provide you with the Linux Server but a range of all available software tools to host your own web application or website. All these tools are the part of the hosting package. No need to buy separate software development tools.

Cloud Hosting is scalable. Come back to the concept of shared linux hosting. If you want to upgrade your plan or move to a dedicated server there is a lengthy and technically challenging migration process involved which is full with risks. For subscribers of cloud hosting plans, upgrades are a breeze. The website never goes down even for a second.

Is Cloud Hosting for bloggers

Cloud Hosting will give your blog the edge with better and seamless management and amalgamation of hardware and software. But the present costing for cloud hosting does not justify the features which cloud hosting offer.

Web Programmers and App developers will use cloud hosting to offer services to their customers though their websites. But they are not bloggers in the true sense.

Even if your blog is attracting heavy traffic, a shared hosting or dedicated or virtual server should be able to handle it.