Web Hosting Wars!! Your Unbiased and Definitive Guide Comparing Self Hosting and 3rd Party Website Hosting Service Providers

Ever feel like you aren't getting the full picture when deciding how and where you should host your website - like the review sites you used to compare hosing providers might have had ulterior motives *cough* commissions *cough* you weren't privy to? Perhaps the speed and reliability guaranteed by your ISP was preceded by the qualifier 'up to' 30 mbps (megabits...not bytes) upload speeds and you don't know how truly fast and reliable your ISP is? After months of wadding through the miles of muck put out there by biased review sites, extensively researching the speed and reliability of many ISPs, and just getting fed up with the entire process, I decided it was time to confront all the BS floating around on the web and take the matter head on by creating Hacky's Definitive Guide to Building the Ultimate Web Server. I won't be taking a cent from any ISP, affiliate network, or 3rd party hosting provider, so you know you'll be able to trust the findings of this study and if you have any suggestions, feel free to offer them. Just know that any users opinions/links offered without substantiation will be banned from this site. And so, without further adieu, I proudly present this informational article series on how selecting the best web hosting option for your website!

Hacky's Definitive Guide to Web Hosting: Which host is the fastest, which host is the most reliable, and which hosting company is the most cost effective!

In this article series, we'll be discussing the following topics. While reading through the complete series is educational, you can always jump to any of the sections below to answer specific questions you may have about selecting the best hosting provider. Here are just a few of the topic we will be covering:

• Should you host your website on your own home server or use a 3rd party hosting provider?
• What types of hosting services are offered by outside hosting companies?
• How should I go about optimizing my website to reduce load times?
• What are the most important things to search engines when selecting a hosting provider?
• How important are peripherial web site features - like SSL, hosting, and compatibility with your design platform (like Wordpress)?
• If I open ports on my router to the internet to host my own website will it compromise the security of my system? 
• Building the ultimate web server on a budget: 
• Should you use a Virtual Machine?
• Building your box: Key hardware and connectivity considerations:
• What type of hard drive should you use:
• Internal vs. External Drives
• Bytes vs. Bits: There is a difference and why you should care
• Hard Drive and Network Connections: Avoiding bottlenecks and optimizing performance:
• PCIE (3.0 w/ 16 lanes aka x16 - 31.5 GBps or 252 Gbps)
• Thunderbolt (40 Gbps)
• USB 3.1(10 Gbps)
• eSata (6 Gbps)
• Firewire (6 Gbps)
• USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)
• Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps)
• USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)
• Ethernet (100 Mbps)
• What operating system is ideal for speed and reliability?
• Web Host Speed Trials: How do 3rd party web hosting providers compare with my in-house web server?
• Web Host Reliability Trials: How do 3rd party web hosting providers compare with my residential ISP in-house hosted web server? 
• What are the different types of hosting environments that 3rd party providers offer and what is the pricing difference? 
• The in-house hosted web server: What free software packages offer you the most bang for your buck?

In-depth review? You betcha! Impartial? Absolutely, I have no loyalty nor am I paid any commissions or referral fees from any of the hardware, software, or 3rd party hosting sites cited in this study. A work in progress? Absolutely. If there's one thing that is in a constant state of flux, it's technology. Faster computers, internet connections, and software are developed on a seemingly daily basis. Consider this series on selecting the best method for hosting your website an ongoing work in progress, and by all means, feel free to submit your own opinions and observations. Ready? Time to dive in! 

We'll begin our study with an in-depth look at building your own webserver on a budget, building an optimized virtual machine, and the performance results from each medium.