What is web hosting and why the hell do I need it anyway? Great question that deserves a decent answer. One of the first things I taught to my students was this concept of where their website was physically located. In order to view a website or a blog, it has to have a home. The files, images and content have to be on a server somewhere in the world so that when your domain name is typed in, it displays what you want it to display.

Your Wordpress blog has a home on a web server. The web server is a computer located somewhere in the world and may be shared by many other blogs.

The server that stores all your files and serves them out when requested is called a Web Host. Web Hosting is the first thing you will require after purchasing your desired website name (or domain name).

Understanding Web Hosting

In the picture above we see a simple diagram showing how your computer is connected to your Web Host across the internet. In the old days (1990’s and early 2000’s), people would work on their web pages using Frontpage or Dream Weaver, Microsoft Visual Dev, or in my case Notepad and then once they had them looking like they wanted, would transfer the files to the Web Host where they would then be available for viewing to people around the world.

Files are transferred to your Web Host using a free ftp program like FireFTP.

These days, blogging platforms like Wordpress make it easy to add content to your website right from within your web browser and the days of manually editing, tweaking and formatting your website are gone. With Wordpress, it’s easily done with the click of a button.

Web Hosts charge a yearly fee for various services that they offer.

• Storage space for your files
• Database server for your data and content
• One click install of your Wordpress Blog
• Bandwidth - or the moving of files from the server to the browser
• Email for your domain
• Online Photo Galleries
• Website Statistics – who’s visiting, from where, what words, and how
• 24/7 phone support
• Much more

Basic packages are around $100 a year but some Web Hosting companies offer much better rates for more than one year. Prices actually vary depending on your contract such as $8.95 per month if you pay by the month, but then lowers to $6.95 per month if you pay for a year in advance. The price may drop to as little as $4.95 a month if you pay for 3 years in advance. I use and recommend both Hostgator and Host Monster as very good places to get your web hosting.

If you want to have a blog or a website, you pretty much need to rent some space from a Web Hosting company in some form or another. There are free places to host your blog, but they’re not as robust or allow you to customize the things you need. They’re a fine place to get started if you need to, but most outgrow their free hosting quickly.

The easiest way to answer the question “what is Web Hosting” is to simply realize that someone, somewhere, has to store your files so that they can be viewed by others on the internet. A Web Host is the computer that manages all the parts of storing your data, managing your traffic as well as the other benefits listed above.

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