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What is web hosting and how does it work

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Web hosting isn’t as complex as it may sound. It’s all about getting your website live on the internet. Having said that, web hosting plans come in many forms; each designed to cater specifically to a particular kind of website. And In this article we’ll explore what is web hosting, how does it work and different packages designed to cater particular kind of website.

What is web hosting?

Think of web hosting as buying or renting a piece of digital land. And instead of farming, you sow the seeds of your website on this digital land. 

Enough with all the metaphors. Let’s hear the geeky version. 

When you opt for the services of a hosting provider, they store your site’s file on their web server. Once the files are uploaded on the server, your site goes online and is now in the state of being hosted. 

Whenever a person will type in your domain name, the server will fetch your files and make them accessible. 

On a side note, web hosting includes a lot more than simply getting your website online. A good web hosting provider will guarantee high uptime, server maintenance, security, and speed to provide a seamless experience to the users of your website. 

How does web hosting work?

Working on web hosting is pretty straightforward. In fact, you can host a website all on your own. But that’s not really a good idea and to just sum it up: you could host a website on your own, but you really shouldn’t. 

So, what makes hosting companies better than the idea of self-hosting? How do they work? 

For starters, they have better and much more advanced technology. 

When you build a website, you essentially create a bunch of files. Now, to make these files accessible, they need to be stored on a server. 

A hosting provider has servers where they’ll store your site’s files. Your website will also be allocated a certain share of the server’s resources (RAM, bandwidth, storage, etc) according to your hosting plan. 

So, storage of the web site’s files and resources allocation are what enable your website to go online. 

Types of web hosting

Web hosting is a general term. But the thing is that website hosting comes in many forms. And some of them are discussed below:

Shared Hosting 

In shared hosting, many websites are being hosted on one web server. And the resources are shared among them. 

It’s the simplest and budget-friendly hosting plan for a beginner. 

VPS Hosting

In VPS hosting, one physical server is split into many virtual servers. So, each virtual server has its own private place. Resources are isolated for individual users using virtualisation technology.

Dedicated Server Hosting

A dedicated server is the most powerful form of web hosting. In a dedicated server, you rent the whole server. None of the resources is shared and you get root/admin privileges for complete server control down to the kernel.

WordPress Hosting

It’s a super-specific form of web hosting designed to simplify, secure, and speed up WordPress installation and management.

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. In fact, according to W3 Techs, WordPress is used by 42.3% of all websites on the internet.

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Conclusion

The idea of web hosting boils down to one thing: storing your website’s files on the server. Since a server is just a computer, you can technically speaking, host your own website. But unless you are a webmaster, this idea isn’t recommended at all. 

Instead, check our web hosting plans. We have a wide variety of hosting plans available from low cost shared hosting plans to fully managed dedicated servers and everything in between.

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