Here’s a quick post about website hosting. I usually get a couple of requests from my support desk about hosting, domain registration and uploading files to a website so I’m going to take some time to explain these terms and give some practical examples.
Hosting is a service provided by companies such as HostGator that allow the files for your website to be displayed online. When you build a website all your images, videos, text and other content for your site are usually created or stored (hosted) on your personal computer. The problem is that no one else will see them on your computer. For the files to be viewed online they have to be store at a hosting company.
The hosting company has servers that are directly connected to the internet so that people can access your website content. These servers are simply powerful computers that have massive amounts of storage space and are dedicated to displaying your content online.
When you sign up for a hosting account at these companies you are simply given your own storage space on these powerful computers to put your content. This space when combined with your website address (domain name) allows users with internet access to directly access your website and its contents.
It is therefore very important that when choosing a Hosting company that you choose one that has a good reputation, a high up-time percentage (how likely your website will be seen) and large amounts of storage space and bandwidth depending on how large a website you plan to build.
Once you have chosen your hosting company you usually receive access to your control panel and the location of your Domain Name Servers (DNS). Your control panel is where you can upload files to your site as well as many other functions for your website.
As mentioned before your DNS is your storage area at your hosting company and this will be directly linked to your domain name. You can usually purchase a domain name when you sign up for hosting or you can register your domain first and then link it to your hosting account as this in most cases will be less expensive.
Next you go to your control panel to upload your website files or you can use a FTP client to do this as well and people all around the world will be able to see your site. I hope this post has helped to explain website hosting, but if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below.
This was very informative………thanks for the clarity!