An introduction to network hosting

If you’re like many web users, you look around at friends’ websites or the Internet in general and think, How are they doing this? How do they just know this stuff?

Their secret, simply put, is web hosting.

While web hosting can take some beginners years of trial and error and article reading to fully grasp, here we’ll cut through that confusion

1. Intro to Web Hosting

Web hosting is simply the process of renting out or buying space to house your website on the Internet. Your website and its content have to be served up by a server, which is essentially a computer that connects other web users to your site from anywhere in the world.

In essence, a web host is the accommodating host computer that’s giving your site a place to stay, and that will present the content of your site to anyone who visits your web address.

2. Why You Need a Host

While it is physically possible to host your site on your own server if are especially tech-savvy, to do so would be signing yourself up for a laundry list of headaches.

Hosting a website yourself requires an expensive server with a constantly-running power supply, power backups in case of outages, a static IP address (your home computer’s IP is always changing or dynamic), and regular hardware maintenance.

This all requires a tremendous amount of technical know-how and hardware that’s both costly and complicated to maintain. Since you are new to the world of web hosting and likely lack the technical chops needed to set up and maintain a server, we strongly advise that you opt for a hosting service instead.

3. Recommended Hosts by Category

A hosting service (or simply, a host) is just a company that has tons of servers, and rents out that server space to people who want their websites to appear on the Web. Renting server space from a host takes just a couple of minutes and you can do so online in just a few clicks.

Besides the easy setup, hosts specialize in keeping servers running 24/7, and they provide you with the technical support needed to get your site up and running smoothly. Best yet, you can get all of this for as low as $3 a month.

To determine which host is best for you, the first thing to note is that there are several categories of web hosting to choose from: shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting being the three main types.

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