Web Hosting – Why do you need a web host?
Web hosting is actually quite a simple concept; however, let’s step back a moment and explain web hosting right from the start.
So, you’ve had your site designed and it’s all ready to roll. You might even have registered your domain name or started thinking about the type of name you want for your site. With the help of today’s technology, even technically inexperienced people can design and create their own website and register a domain name. So, can we take this whole internet thing one step further and host our site ourselves on our own PC? Well, the basic answer is no! To get your site live and kicking on the internet you’ll need the services of a web host provider.
Web hosting involves, quite simply, taking a website and a domain name and leasing space on a web server from your chosen web host provider.
Alternatively, you may even lease a web server to yourself if you have large volumes of traffic or run the operation in-house. Most of us, however, will opt for a shared server deal with a web hosting business. The web host provider will lodge your site on a web server, make the necessary connections between your domain name and its server configurations, and then you’re up and running. Your site is out there on the internet for all to see (hopefully
But, behind the simplicity of this concept of web hosting, there is actually a lot of quite complex technology. The fact that you can connect to the internet via your PC does not make it suitable to act as your web hosting option even if it is technically powerful enough to do the job. Web servers are complex machines that need to be connected to the internet ALL of the time to do their job properly. They are ideally stored in secure environments that are climate-controlled to maintain optimum performance and for security reasons. Web servers also need specialist software and expert technical expertise, and the cost of owning and running one will run into thousands and thousands of dollars. View our list of Secure Hosting providers.
All of which goes some way to explain just why most of us will opt to use the facilities and the expertise of a specialist web hosting provider. Using a web host provider is just far cheaper and easier for individuals or small- to medium-sized businesses to cut their costs and outsource their web host services to experts.
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