Web hosts normally provide customers with two types of IP address for their sites. Shared IP addresses and static IP addresses are the two different types of IP address provided. If you choose to sign up to shared web hosting you will be paying for a certain amount of space on the web host’s server. There will be many different types of websites all sharing space on the server and all sharing the same IP address. Sharing an IP address is suitable for those sites that are not too concerned with security such as blogs or informational sites.

Although static IP addresses are essential for sites such as ecommerce sites where security would be an issue. Likewise if you have a website that is holding confidential information, you would also need a static IP address. Sites like these require the use of SSL encryption which requires the use of a static IP address. SSL encryption is required in order to make sure that any confidential data travelling to and from your site is encrypted. This way you can prevent any of this data from ending up in the wrong hands. It is not possible to use SSL encryption with a shared IP address.

FTP transfers also require the use of a static IP address. If you are allowing visitors to your site to download files then you must have a static IP address. That is why many people prefer to use static IP addresses.

Although you do not need to worry too much about security for your site if it is not an ecommerce site. If you have developed a website in order to generate income through ads, then it would be sufficient to choose a shared IP address. You can also forget about static IP addresses if your website does not have the facility for visitors to download files.

Whenever you make your decision to enter the big, bad world of internet marketing, you should really have hosting dealt with beforehand. Newbie’s can find, though, that the web hosting world can be rather confusing. An example of this could be coming across reseller web hosting or even linux web hosting when you are looking at different hosting plans.