How to host a website?

To host a website, you need to make your website's files available on a computer that is always connected to the internet — a web server. This process involves several steps, each of which is a decision or an action you must take.

First, you must select a web hosting service provider. This is the company that will give you space on their web server. But a web server is not just storage; the provider also offers related technologies and services that make your site work. These include a database to store dynamic content, bandwidth to handle visitor traffic, data backup to prevent loss, firewall support for security, and email services. Your choice of provider depends entirely on the features and services you want to offer through your website.

Second, you need to identify and register a domain name. A domain name is the human-readable address of your website (like example.com). It should best suit your requirement — for instance, it should be easy to remember and reflect your brand or purpose. You get it registered through a domain name Registrar, an organisation authorised to sell domain names.

Third, once you have purchased web space, you will create logins with appropriate rights and note down the IP address of your web space. The login credentials let you manage your files, and the IP address is the numerical address of your server.

Fourth, you upload the files of your website into properly organised folders on the allocated space. This means structuring your HTML, CSS, images, and other assets in a logical directory hierarchy.

Fifth, and finally, you get the domain name mapped to the IP address of the web server. This mapping is done by the Domain Name System (DNS) — a service that translates a domain name into its corresponding IP address. When a user enters your website's address in a browser, the DNS finds the IP address of the server for that domain and sends the request to that server. Without this mapping, users would have to remember a string of numbers instead of a name. …