Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting refers to when many web sites are hosted on a single web server. Each domain name will have its own alloted space on the servers hard drive to store its files that is inaccessible by other web sites or clients hosting on the web server.
The Primary difference between shared hosting and a virtual private server is that a virtual private server has its own operating system within the partition alloted to it on the servers hard drive, therefore making it like its own self contained web server. With shared hosting all of the different clients domains share the same operating system, just their web files are separated into different directories.
With shared hosting there is very limited control you have as the client over the web server. The web hosting company administers and maintains the server themselves, taking care of software updates and server backup. For clients who's basic need is to just host a web site, shared hosting is an ideal solution as it is very easy and affordable.
A shared hosting account will usually provide a limited amount of disk storage that each client can use to store their web files. This is usually referred to as "storage" or "disk space" and is measured in gigabytes(G). It is common today for many web hosting companies to advertise "unlimited storage" with their web hosting plans. While this means that there is no limit that they will impose on you for how much disk space you may use, it is still limited by the size of the hard drive that stores the files. This is usually not a problem since HTML files are relatively small in size. A shared hosting plan that offers 10 Gig. storage is in all but the rarest cases way more than enough.
Hosting companies will normally allow you a certain amount of data transfer each month, referred to as bandwidth. This is the measurement of how much data is transfered through their connections. If someone downloads a file that is 1 megabyte in size, that megabyte of information just got "transferred" through their connection. Many web hosting companies will offer unlimited transfer with their shared hosting plans so that you never get charged a bandwidth overage fee. Again though, unless you had a very popular sites where enormous amounts of people where viewing large multi-media files (like videos) daily you would probably not ever need more than a few hundred Gigs of bandwidth.
Shared hosting accounts will use a web based control panel to allow the client/user access to manage their hosted files and domains. They will also provide FTP accounts for users to upload their files to their directory on the server. Shared hosting accounts are the ideal way to get started with hosting your first web sites and may be all that you would ever need.