What Is Website Hosting?
WHY DO YOU NEED WEB HOSTING?
If you’re just thinking about setting up a website or starting a blog, you might have come across the fact that you’re going to need website hosting. If you’re new to all of this, you might be wondering exactly what web hosting is.
Let’s explain this in more detail.
Author: Jeremy Owen
Web Designer, Developer & SEO Specialist
Last Updated: January 31, 2023
The Three Different Types Of Hosting You’ll Need
When it comes to creating a new website or blog, you’re actually going to need two or three different types of hosting.
- Domain hosting
- Email hosting (this is only necessary if you want domain-based emails)
- Website hosting
So, what’s the difference between these? In simple terms, consider these as online storage spaces for your domain name, emails, and website. They are then all connected together so that your website works seamlessly.
Domain Hosting
When you first start out, you’ll want to choose a domain name for your website. This is what people will type into the top bar of whichever web browser they’re using to reach your site.
You’ll purchase this domain name from a registered domain retailer and will then follow a few simple steps to connect this domain name to your website host using the hosting provider’s cPanel. Generally, your web hosting provider will provide domain hosting free of charge as part of the hosting package you’ve selected.
Email Hosting
An email host is what you’ll use to store your domain-based emails which you can then download onto your device of choice. It’s a good idea to have your emails stored separately from your website but you can use the primary part of your domain name as part of your email name.
For example, if your domain name is happysnaps.com.au, then your email could be [email protected] or something similar and this would be hosted on a cloud hosting provider like Microsoft’s Office 365 or Google Workspace.
Website Hosting
Now we come to the actual website hosting. This is where you’re going to be storing all the information that is on your website. It’s really just like a virtual filing cabinet that stores all your website’s details and shows people whatever they want to see when they visit your site.
Most web hosts will add a high level of encryption to your website data so that no one else can change any of it unless you give them specific access.
The Three Different Types Of Hosting You’ll Need
To add to the confusion, there are numerous website hosting providers and different types of hosting as well. These include:
- Shared Hosting is where your website is hosted on a shared server that also hosts a number of other websites. This is usually the cheapest option and a good one to start with.
- Virtual Private Servers or VPS Hosting is where you have a dedicated partitioned section of a server that is reserved only for your website.
- Dedicated Hosting is where you get a server all to yourself and don’t have to share any of the available resources.
- Cloud Hosting is where parts of your website are stored on different servers around the world that are connected to each other. This type of hosting is particularly useful for resource-heavy websites because it allows for faster load times.
IN SUMMARY
So, to sum it up, website hosting is basically a storage system for your website that makes it freely available online to whoever wants to visit it. Below we have provided links to some of our other hosting related articles which may be helpful.
Our Review Of The Best Web Hosting In Australia
