Web Hosting Tutorial Series

Video #1: What is Web Hosting?

It might appear to the average web surfer that the Internet works all by itself. However, many website owners have come to learn that’s not the case at all. Web hosting is a critical component of how the Internet works today. But what is web hosting, really?

In order for your website to visible and available to the world, it hast to be hosted on a web server. Web hosting is a service provided by thousands of businesses – Internet service providers and/or web hosting companies – worldwide. They set up and maintain entire buildings called datacenters that are full of computer systems called servers.

The service these companies provide (in the form of a web hosting package) is access to your websites via the Internet. With this type of access you can also upload your websites – HTML pages, images, etc. When configured properly, computers around the world will quickly know exactly where to find them and making your website visible to Internet users all over the world.

There are several different types of web hosting providers – shared, dedicated, ecommerce, etc. If you are just getting started, more than likely you’ll need a shared hosting provider for your website. Shared hosting means that your website is hosted on a server that is shared by other customers and that your web hosting provider is the one responsible for managing and monitoring your site to ensure that it is always up and running. Inexpensive and popular, shared hosting is the easiest and most typical way to get started.

Ready to learn more about web hosting?

Even someone who is tech savvy and has lots of computer experience is likely to have many unanswered questions. We hope that most of those questions will be answered in the series of tutorials that follow.