What Is Web Hosting?

What Is Web Hosting?

When you are starting a website online, you need to think about a few things:

  • What platform should my website be on?
  •  What should be the name of my website?
  • Where should I host my website?

Well, if you’re following the courses in ShoutUniversity, you will probably be using WordPress as your platform.

After you’ve decided that WordPress is the best, to start your own website/blog, you need to purchase two things: 

  1. Domain name
  2. Web hosting

Think of the domain name like your address and web hosting like your house.

Web hosting is the place where all the files (images, CSS, coding, etc.) of your website will be placed, and when users type in your domain name (your web address), they will access those files from your web host (your house) sent directly to their browser (in the form of a website).

To have your website accessible from everywhere in the world, you need some online space to host your website’s files. 

Now, hosting need not be bought through a company; you can do it from your computer too, but you probably can’t guarantee 24/7 online access. You would have to set up everything, including backups and security, which is not even technically possible for a lot of us.

So instead of doing it ourselves, we can buy a hosting space from a renowned web hosting company. This will ensure our website is online 24/7, is secure and is backed up in case something catastrophic happens. 

Most hosting companies also offer a lot of additional services to ensure our website is run properly and smoothly.

A Brief Overview Of How A Website Works 

So the domain name is the address (ex: ShoutMeLoud.com is a domain name), and all the files are stored on a web server (owned by a web host). This web hosting server also has an address- an I.P. (internet protocol) address which is represented by a string of numbers like 172.156.76.89.

 When a user types the domain name into their browser (ShoutMeLoud.com), they are requesting to the DNS (domain name service) to access the website at the web host’s server I.P. address (172.156.76.89).

The DNS connects the domain name to the web hosting server. 

Note: You can buy a domain name from one service and buy web hosting from another. All you need to do is point the DNS to the web host. This is very easy to do and I will show you how to do it a little bit later. 

Before we start talking about the technical things, let’s take a look at some common web hosting terms…