You bought a domain name, but when you type it in, nothing is there. It’s because you’re not hosted. What is web hosting and how does it work? It’s an essential part of creating and developing your website, but it’s not a decision to take lightly.
The wrong type of hosting or hosting plan is disastrous for your website. It can limit the amount of traffic you get and the revenue you receive. A bad hosting company can lead to your site going down or getting hacked.
If you have a website that’s not performing or thinking about buying a website and want to learn about hosting in layman’s terms, keep reading.
Contents
What is Web Hosting and How Does it Work?
Buying a functioning website is a lot like buying a house. You can buy a house, but you also need a place to put it. You need an empty lot to build the house and everything that goes with it from your belongings to the kid’s swing set.
A domain name is your house and hosting is your empty lot. In reality, the web host is a computer called a server. When a person types in your domain name, the name servers direct it to the hosting server. All your files, code, CSS, images and everything else that make up your website is there.
It loads everything and, voila, the person sees your website. Many web hosting use a cPanel hosting to allow its users to access their information, make changes and see their email. The cPanel is the architect of the web hosting server.
How do websites work? They function through the hosting.
Types of Hosting Available
There are many different hosting companies and each one has different prices and services. There’re also different types of hosting depending on your needs such as:
Anyone with a small website or starting a blog, most likely uses shared hosting. With shared hosting, you rent a piece of the server along with several other websites. It’s the simplest of the hosting packages, but it’s also the most likely to crash.
You’re sharing space and resources with many websites and if several of them get a sudden traffic jump because of Cyber Monday, then it can overload the server and slow your site. You also can’t change many server settings.
Dedicated Hosting
A dedicated server means your site is the only one on it and you have full control. If you have a large site with e-commerce or a high traffic site, then you’ll want dedicated web hosting.
Reseller Hosting
If you want to sell hosting, then you can rent part of a server and sell your own hosting services.
VPS Hosting
If you can’t afford dedicated hosting, then VPS hosting is the next best thing. It’s like shared hosting, but you’re given dedicated resources not shared with others.
Choose Hosting Wisely
Your choice of hosting should depend on your needs. Think about the size of your site and the traffic you get and if you intend to include e-commerce. Do research on the different hosting companies and learn what is web hosting and how does it work.
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