Apart from varying laws in different countries influencing the type of web content deemed suitable to be hosted on servers in different countries, another possible reason for some disallowed sites at some web hosting companies on shared hosting especially, may be down to the type of content and traffic that they generate being simply too heavy on resources.

Not to be confused with a website that is simply popular and receiving high traffic but some websites have questionable content or can be setup in a way to serve a particular purpose that would most likely cause all other websites on that shared server to regularly suffer downtime and for too long.

A responsible web host will take into account the fact that all shared web hosting customers on their servers need to receive an acceptable amount of uptime and that no individual customer is allowed to hammer the resources on that server.

If they allow a customer on their servers to spam or to have some other type of setup that can be too heavy on the server and cause problems then they will quickly lose business as customers begin to move away to other web hosting companies.

Usually within the terms the web host will list some of the types of sites and services that they will not allow to be hosted on their servers, including IRC Bots, Pirated Software, File Dumps, Autosurf Sites, Hacking Related, Spam Scripts and many others, but also adult content can be disallowed at many hosts too.

Some web hosting companies will not allow anything questionable on their servers and that includes on VPS hosting that they may offer and dedicated hosting too, but especially on shared hosting where resources are more limited and not only is it illegal to host some of the above sites and services in most countries but they often bring strain on a server because of the purpose that they serve.

When a web hosting company disallows certain types of websites (and most do) they are doing it for good reason, to avoid breaking the law in their country and the country that their servers are located and also to operate as a responsible web host where shared resources are available as they should be and keeping downtime to a minimum.

Filed under: General Web Hosting Info by admin Published November 20, 2008