Hosting of a Website

What is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is the service that makes a website or web page available on the Internet, turning it into a part of the World Wide Web. Without hosting, a website exists only on your local computer and no one else can see it.

Two Ways to Host a Website

1. Using your own hardware server

You can build a physical server, install the website on it, and connect that server directly to the Internet. This gives you full control but requires you to manage the hardware, power, cooling, and network connection yourself.

2. Renting server resources from a cloud provider

Instead of owning a server, you can rent resources — CPU, RAM, and storage — from a cloud service provider. You upload all the files that make up your website (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, databases, etc.) from your local computer onto the space allocated on the provider's server. This is the more common and practical approach for most websites.

The Role of a Web Hosting Service Provider

To rent server space, you must avail the services of a web hosting service provider. These companies own and maintain the servers. Their services are usually paid, and the resources you use — such as RAM, hard disk space, and bandwidth — can be increased or decreased depending on the traffic load on your website. This flexibility is called scalability.

IP Address and Domain Name

When a web server (whether local or cloud) is connected to the Internet, it is assigned a unique numeric address called an IP address (e.g., 192.0.2.1). However, users find it inconvenient to remember long strings of numbers. Therefore, this IP address is mapped to a textual name called the domain name of the website (e.g., www.example.com). …