The web world may lead you into terms like domain names, web hosting and secure certificates. Confused yet? If you are new to this you probably are. What are the main ingredients a web site absolutely needs to be up and running. For any basic site there are two main essential requirements – domain name registration and web site hosting. Basically your name like “facebook.com” and a place to keep your files that your visitor will see.
Domain names are just an easy way for visitors to remember your site and type it into their browser. What about the web hosting aspect of it? Well let’s explain what you are doing when you buy web hosting. Your web site files need to be stored in a public place, a container, that will display your files. Files for your web site could be code or multimedia files, such as HTML, CSS or Flash. Your web site requires a web hosting server, that is essentially a computer designed to show your web pages. In essence a web hosting package is a service provided by a Company that allows anybody with access to the internet the ability to view your web site files.
Now that we understand what web hosting actually is, what do all these features mean when I am looking to buy web hosting packages? For starting sites, two main features will be of interest – disk space and bandwidth. The former translates to the file size you can store on the web hosting server. The latter indicates how much data your server can transfer when web site visitors visit your web page. As you want to grow with your site and use more advanced features like for a Blogging system, you will want to look into language support (ASP or PHP) and database support (mySQL). Language support means the Server language the code was written in, while the database is essentially where your data is stored.
To summarize, web hosting is a server that displays your code and visual files to users of your site. Depending on the nature of your site, you will then need to consider package features such as disk space, bandwidth, language support and database support.
