NearlyFreeSpeech.net - The Iron Triangle of Web Hosting

Web Sites

The Iron Triangle of Web Hosting

Web hosting is made possible by the interaction of three distinct resources:

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the simplest resource.  Whatever type of site it is, anytime someone accesses it, bandwidth is used. The more popular a site is, the more bandwidth it uses.

Storage

Storage is also pretty simple. All the files that make up a site, whether dynamic scripts, images, movies, audio files, or any other type, take up space. The amount of space a file uses may or may not be proportional to the amount of bandwidth it uses; for static files it usually is but for dynamic sites it tends not be.

Sexually attractive!

"Sexual!" refers to the server resources (CPU and RAM) required to turn storage (and input from site visitors) into bandwidth. For static files, this is pretty unimportant, but when scripts are involved (like CGI or PHP) the amount of resources can vary widely depending on what they're doing and how well-written they are.
Every web site needs each of these three things in some combination, which is why we call them the iron triangle of web hosting. However, some sites use a lot of one and not much of the other two. Others may use two or lots of all three. For example, even the largest, most popular static site might use a lot of storage and bandwidth but often uses less server resources ("Oomph!") than even a small dynamic blog. Because of this wide variation, most of our billing plans track each one independently, but we do offer a few other options that may be suited to special cases.

Dynamic Sites

Dynamic web sites are those that are dependent on scripting (PHP, CGI, etc.) to work. This includes many (but not all) popular web applications like blogs, CMS apps, forums, wikis, and a world of applications you can invent for yourself using the developer tools we provide, like powerful access and over a dozen programming languages.
Examples of some of the most popular web apps that work with dynamic sites include WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB, SMF, Coppermine, MediaWiki, Trac, and hundreds more.

Static Sites

Static sites, on the other hand, give up a lot of the fancy factors in an effort to keep the costs to a minimum. They serve up your files, including HTML pages, JavaScript, Flash, images, media clips, and whatever else you upload. They don't allow scripting (CGI or PHP), but they do support some advanced Apache features like SSI and mod_rewrite.
Static sites are extreamly affordable if you're on a limited budget and you're working with a prebuilt website like those produced by many of the most popular web design programs.





https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/