What is Website Hosting?
If you’re starting to develop a new website then you have probably have come across the term ‘hosting’ but may not be entirely sure what does Hosting mean. Here comes a quick and concise explanation:
Hosting is basically the computer on which you store your site.
When you create a document on your home or office computer in a program like Word or Excel, you save it to the hard disk of your computer so that you can open it again later.
A website must also be saved somewhere, but it has to be available at all times so that people (not just you) who want to access your site can view it at any time. So rather than storing it on your own computer, you can pay a hosting company to store it on their ’server’, a large computer that is connected to the web all day and all night and is designed specifically to ‘host’ websites.
There are different special features that your hosting provider can provide, including an online control panel to manage technical aspects of your website, email administration and even the ability to install web based programs such as Wordpress at the click of a button.
However, there are a few basics that you should know about:
Reliability
Many hosting companies will advertise a feature such as 99.9% up time. This means that on average the server (and therefore your website) will be functioning properly 99.9% of the time. None of the companies can guarantee 100% up time, but it is wise to find a reliable host because if your website keeps going offline then you will be missing out on visits from potential customers and it probably would give a bad impression about your business.
Storage Capacity
Storage Capacity is the quantity of information that you can store on your hosting account. If you have a small website, then you will only require a few MB of space but if you have a large site with lots of pictures, animations, videos, music etc then you could need much more. Many hosting providers already offer Unlimited storage capacity so your website is not limited in how large it can grow.
Bandwidth
You will have visitors from across the world coming to your website and looking at pages from your site on their own computers. Therefore, in order for them to see your website, your hosting company’s server must send your website data over the web to lots of different computers who are browsing on your website. This requires your hosting server to do work, which is measures by the volume of information (MB) that it sends each month. Your hosting company may set a monthly limit on the amount of data that can be transmitted per month may be set by your hosting company, and is referred to as bandwidth.
The amount of bandwidth that you require is mostly affected by two things: 1. The number of visitors to your site and 2. The quantity of information on your website that needs to be transmitted. It is possible to get hosting accounts with unlimited bandwidth.
Compatibility
If you need to host anything more than a very basic website, then you must check that the hosting that you buy is compatible with any technologies that you need to use. For example, softwares such as WordPress and Magento run on your hosting server to make your website work correctly with the features that you’ve chosen.
Just like when you buy a piece of software for your home or office computer, you need to check that your computer meets the operating requirements of the software.
To find out if a hosting plan is compatible, just ask the hosting company if they can run the software that you need.
In addition to website hosting, you should also consider other aspects such as your domain name, brand design, usability and SEO Web Design to ensure that your website is successful in meeting your objectives.