Web hosting
What is web hosting?
Think of a web page as a file similar to a Microsoft Word document that you have created and saved on your PC but rather than a Word document, your file is an .html file. Its true that many web pages are generated dynamically at the time a user visits a site but for the purpose of describing web hosting let’s discuss these pages as if they are static, meaning they never change. So each web page you create is a file, such as about-us.html or welcome.html. When a visitor to your site wants to view a web page on your site they enter the URL of that page in their browser either by typing it in or clicking on a link from another page to your page. At that time, your web page is actually downloaded to their computer and displayed in a browser such as Internet Expoler (IE) or Firefox. But where is it downloaded from? Where does it exist for browsers to be able to find it. The answer is a web server. A web server is simply a computer or series of computers with some special characteristics. It is a computer that stores your files and can be found by anyone browsing the internet at any time. Obviously this can’t be your home computer or laptop. Those computers aren’t (or shouldn’t be) accessible to anyone on the web and nor are they always on. This is where a web server comes into play. Web servers are typically very fast and powerful computers that can handle many requests at one time. They are always connected to the public internet so that anyone can access the web pages on those computers. When you put your html files on a web server then anyone in the world should be able to view them. A web hosting provider is a service provider company that manages web servers for you. Typically they manage thousands of them in a data center that has redundant power, multiple high speed internet connections and people on staff 24 hours a day to make sure these computers are always up and running. There are both shared web servers and dedicated web servers. A shared server simply means your files are on the same computer with other web sites. This is very common and highly secure. Those other web site owners on your shared server will only be able to make changes to their html pages and you will only be able to make changes to yours. Millions of web sites are on shared servers (including this one) and for most small web sites this is sufficient. I’d suggest that if you are reading this blog, that probably means a shared server is fine for your needs at least to start.
That was a lot of technical mumbo jumbo. Suffice it to say, to launch your web site you need a web hosting provider and there are hundreds including Yahoo!, Bluehost, Godaddy and many more. You should be able to get good web hosting to launch your site for around $10-$20 per month. If you plan to do commerce on your site (I.e. sell things) then you will have to pay a little more but most web hosts offer that as an add-on. Your web host should also provider e-mail and most have other add-on services you can purchase.