The web hosting landscape is changing.

Not the monumental, earth shattering changes that certain industries go through from time to time. Rather the simple, convenience aspects to a sometimes confusing process.

Do you remember the first time you set up a website and had to learn about name servers, dns settings, IP addresses, and the like? Maybe that’s you now, and you’re wondering just what all the technical mumbo jumo means.

While it’s good to learn it, and over time you will, it’s incredibly easy now to use the tools and resources provided by your web host to get your stie up and running quickly.

Thanks to popular tools like Fantastico (which is integrated into most of the best web hosting companies of today), you can install dozens and dozens of popular scripts like WordPress (what runs this site), forum software, message boards, and more. No longer do you have to know about mySQL databases, configuring database admins, and the like. Hosting companies now offer the tools and resources for even the newest of newbies to get started quickly using their hosting account.

And it hasn’t always been like this.

I can remember as recently as 3 years ago what a chore it was to setup a new hosting account, to setup all the proper configurations, and then to install the html files to setup the new site. Heck, for the first few years, I didn’t even know what FTP was since I used frontpage extensions to do just about everything. For those of you just learning about web hosting, FTP stands for file transfer protocol and is basically a program you use to transfer all of your site files from your desktop to your actual site.

Thankfully, even using FTP is almost non-necessary these days. Thanks to content management systems like WordPress you can literally do everything you need to create, run, and maintain your site from within the WordPress dashboard. It’s amazing!

Cloud Hosting 2012

So as we move into web hosting 2012, there are no doubt changes on the horizon, most notably the proliferation of cloud hosting. Perhaps you’ve heard the term “floating around” for the past few years and wondered what it means.

Think of cloud hosting as something like this. Instead of having one server that holds all of your website information, a huge network of servers hold your information allowing for near instant scaling up or down as resources are demanded.

In a typical hosting environment, you are allocated a certain number of resources and if you use that up (or if you have a big spike in traffic that pushes you over your allotment), your site may be temporarily shut down by your host. Cloud hosting has the appeal that no matter how big or popular your site gets – or how many visitors hit it at one time – your site will always be live no matter the traffic levels.

For this increased convenience comes increased cost, however. Furthermore, the shared hosting accounts provided by most of the top companies – including our favorite Bluehost – are adequate for 99% of website owners. If you can pay about $5/month for something and it works just fine, why pay $100/month for something you don’t really need.

At the end of the day, there has never been a better time to get online and start a web-based business. With domains costing around $10 a year (Bluehost includes a free domain with your hosting purchase), hosting plans as low as $3-$6/month, and free software like WordPress that you can use to run your site, there is NO excuse NOT to do something about it in 2012.

Take advantage of the great and innovative changes that are sweeping over the web hosting industry, and get started with your website, blog, or internet business today…even if it’s 2AM!