How Hosting Works

To get your website on the Internet it must be hosted some how. Hosting is nothing more than putting your website on a computer (server) that has access to the Internet. You can even do this on a computer of your own but no one does that unless they are a very large company.

Typically a website owner rents space from a hosting company. These companies lease space on a monthly basis and provide access to their servers via File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Using an FTP client software, the website owner uploads their site to the host’s computer and that makes it available on the World Wide Web.

Domain Name

Before your website can appear on the Web it must have a domain name. A domain name is an identification label that specifies the network location for your website. After all, the World Wide Web is nothing more than an online computer network. So your domain name serves the primary purpose of helping people find your site on this network. It also serves a secondary purpose of letting the search engines know what your site is about. We talk a lot more about that in our Search Engine Optimization pages.

You can register a domain name with an entirely different company than your hosting provider. You then “point” your domain to your hosting provider via the Domain Name Servers (DNS). More about that later.

Types of Hosting Services

There are actually many types of hosting services that you can purchase, but the main types most people use are these:

Free Hosting

You can put up a website on some one else’s domain. In these plans your site is given a subdomain of that company’s site. For example… http://joeswebsite.wordpress.com. Wordpress.com allows you to create a free blog in this way. You “blog” actually sits on their computers and is found through their domain name.

Sometimes companies offer free hosting (and domain names) in return for putting advertising on your site. These types of services are less effective at building your online brand and often are considered less desirable by the Search Engines and therefore get lower ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

Shared Hosting

In these scenarios the website is on a servers with hundreds or thousands of other websites. This is not a problem because the computers/servers are designed to handle the storage and speed requirements of this approach. BlueHost is an example of this type of hosting.

Dedicated Hosting

In this situation the user gets their own Web server (computer) and gains full control over it. The user may or may not own the server itself. Most topline hosting companies offer this as an option for large websites.

Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.

All Inclusive Hosting

Some companies offer a website building service that includes everything needed to build a successful website including sitebuilding tools, hosting, domain name, autoresponders, and keyword research. Rather than having to find these services separately, the company provides an “all tools in one place” approach. This is how Site Build It! works.

What Else You Need To Know About Hosting

Hosting is just one part of what it takes to build a successful online business. Certainly market/keyword research and the actual presentation of the site are at least as important. Hosting is really nothing more than a means to an end.

So part of the learning process of building a website is learning all aspects of an online business including hosting. As a beginner, hosting is really not something that deserves a lot of attention. Understanding keywords and search engine optimization and how to build content that connects with your visitors is much more worthy of your attention in the beginning.

However…

Once you have a solid of understanding about what it takes to get traffic to your website and how to move your visitors to your Most Wanted Response, knowing how to take advantage of hosting features can be an important thing to know.

For example…

Most good hosting services like BlueHost, allow you to host unlimited domains for the same monthly price (often under $10). Once you know how to build an optimized site then building more sites is often a good strategy. Sometimes, depending on your online marketing approach you can create many small sites to be able to dominate a niche. Having unlimited domains on your hosting account can be very helpful here.

CPanel Hosting

Another feature of a good hosting company is a CPanel Interface. CPanel is nothing more than a standarized interface where features like email accounts, blogs, file management, PHP scripting and other more advanced website features can be easily added to your site(s). Choosing a hosting provider with a standard CPanel interface can provide some real advantages.

For example…

If you want to build a WordPress site/blog, good hosts offer a “one click” install of WordPress to your domain. This can make it extremely easy to create a site using the powerful WordPress open source platform. We’ll talk more about WordPress and it’s capabilities on other pages.

So Hosting is something we need to have a website online but it’s not something that requires too much attention in the beginning. Choosing a system like Site Build It! can provide an easy way to get your first site up with out having to “get under the hood” of the process. However, if you want to take the plunge and start learning about hosting details it’s really not that complicated. Personally I love my BlueHost account and appreciate more all the time.