What Is Web Hosting?
This post is to help you understand what web hosting is in layman’s terms, the intention is to help you if you are brand new to learning about what web hosting is or does in relation to a website set up.
what role does it play in having a website and who offers it, sells it, or how do you get it, so relax and don’t get too anxious about it you will have a clear idea of what WEB HOSTING IS when you are done reading this article.
What Is Web Hosting? Web hosting is a service, is an invisible friend (not an enemy) that stores everything that has to do with a website it is a DIGITAL STORAGE, it stores the main following items and many more but for the purpose of learning the basic functions here is the critical list
Information in many forms Media and Data
Text Files
Images
Videos
Information bundles
Websites
Servers
Email services
And other similar information files, the image below can help visualize the idea.
To further help you understand Web Hosting, here is a short Youtube video courtesy of Dale McManus from Create A Pro Website
What are the other essential things that web hosting plays a role on a website? I am glad you ask.
Keeps Your Site (website) Live and running
This is an essential function of web hosting, it would not matter if it can do all the things mentioned above if it fails to keep your website running on the world wide web. In addition to being your storage, it is also the energy to bring your site to live, and to keep it on, think of it as the electricity at home if the ON switch is OFF your home will be dark and none of your power fixtures will work. There will be as with electricity there are power failures the web hosting service providers do have outages when there are too many users of the internet and it will be important for the hosting company to resolve situations quickly so your website is not in the dark for too long but websites going down is inevitable even the huge world known site go down occasionally right.
Web Hosting Speed Reliability
How fast or for that matter how slow does your website load up when you type it in the web browser is another critical and essential feature of your web host provider, as with everything and in anything, web hosting services are not different. When it comes to speed web hosting providers have different levels of speed depending on the service level you select from entry-level to advanced level all the providers have the very minimum speed required to open up the websites live in your browser and from there they have higher levels of speed depending on the service plan. Another factor that impacts a website loading speed is the number of site visitors the higher the volume of visitors the more speed you’ll need for your site to load up fast. Another important fact to keep in mind is Google, Google likes/favors fast loading websites Google is very interested in presenting their searchers the information they searched for in a fast timely manner as it is in their best interest and I will say that is in our best interest as well if we want to have a great report with Google and if the purpose of our internet presence/website is for monetization purposes in today’s instant gratification demanding society everyone is interested in having the information at their fingertips immediately or before they type their search if possible.No one is interested in slow page loading and you know this for a fact in your own experiences.
Security and Support
Yes, you are getting the idea, web hosting providers also provide the security of your website, again, no provider can guarantee no security breaches but all the providers work really hard to keep the sites they host which is their business secure and free from hackers. Of course, we all know that not even the most powerful and resourceful entities such as governments are can 100% guarantee no hacking to their information systems but every web hosting provider does their part at their best possible capabilities to keep websites secure.
Is Not Your Business Name
This is very important, do not confuse web hosting service with a domain name or URL a web hosting provider is not your domain name/URL or your business name, you can think of web hosting as the fixture your storefront where you will be placing/hanging your business name but you still need to select your business name.
Buying a Business Name From Your Web Hosting Provider
Can you buy your domain name/URL/business name from your web hosting provider? the answer is YES most of the web hosting providers do sell domain names, and it is convenient to buy your domain name and set up your hosting service in one shot.
In this topic, there are diverse and contradicting opinions as to whether or not it is a good idea to buy your domain name from the hosting provider the thinking is that it could work against you if you were not satisfied with the web hosting service and decided to switch providers they could delay the transfer of your service by delaying the release of your name to another provider.
Since these are two different services and the records for your domain name ownership are kept separate this type of record is called Domain Name Registrar. Like I said there are mixed opinions about it, every experience is different and you have to make the decision based on your own experience with your hosting provider there is not a black or white or a right or wrong answer or decision about this matter you learn as you go.
What Are Some Popular Web Hosting Service Providers?
Sitegound
Bluehost
Goddady
Namecheap
Hostgator
Fastcomet
Hostinger
And the list goes on and on
All the above-mentioned Web Hosting Provider companies provide pretty decent services and they are widely known, the quality of customer service they provide can vary from company to company, there is not a single perfect one, they are better and not so great in different aspects of their business
I am an affiliate to some of them if you visit www.offerage.com you will find Discounts and/or Coupons to get their services, this in no way means that you will pay more, on the contrary, you will get a discount if you use our link and in that respect, you will be supporting offerage.com continue to stay online and continue to write articles like this one
I hope this post was helpful to you in understanding what Web Hosting Service is all about, Best of luck to you, please don’t forget to subscribe in our website home page to receive notifications when new articles similar are published
This is web hosting explained in a nutshell with visual images and a video to help grasp the essence of it. Cheers!