Web Development Primer

By: Ahmad Permessur, Published: 2003-05-03, Parent Category: Website Development

Hosting

What is hosting?

Think of hosting as a place to store your website. The Internet is up 24-hours 7 days a week. It is a worldwide network of computers. For most people, putting a permanent connection to the Internet in their homes or small business is not practical or affordable. Most people dial-up to the Internet with a modem. Because of this, you can not put your website or your e-mail system at home. You have it located somewhere that is always online so others can send you mail or find your website-even when you are asleep. There are immense warehouses out there filled with thousands of servers known as data centers. Most websites are nowadays are hosted in such data centers because it is cheaper to manage servers in bulk rather than individually. So when you buy web hosting you're in effect renting space at one of these data centers.

Where do I get hosting?

There are tons of both paid and free web hosting companies on the Net. Just do a search on the term 'web hosting' and you'll be presented with a seemingly endless list of web hosting companies. Those that offer free hosting usually have advertisement banners on them; while this may be an annoyance to you if you are hosting your business site, it is quite convenient for the beginners to try it first before going to a paid one. Choosing the right web hosting for your needs will be a really crucial decision making stage.

I got hosting, what's next?

Once you've selected your hosting package, you'll then have to upload your files to your web host's server. Though the process may vary, most hosts use something called FTP; which stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP provides you with an interface which interact with your server and transfer files from your PC, the same way as your would to transfer your files from one folder to the other on your hard disc. If you need a way to transfer the files search for a program called "WS FTP."

In Closing

After reading this article, you should have a strong understanding on client-side, server-side technologies, hosting, and domain names issues. I hope that it assist you in your effort of understanding what are the different technologies that are available for you to make the most out of it in your websites. Before losing, I'd like to coin out a phrase that my guru, Chris Beasley, once pointed out: "Knowing HTML doesn't make you a webmaster!"

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This article was written by Ahmad Permessur. Ahmad Permessur is a technical author and Forums Director for eDEVcafe.com. In his spare time he maintains his site, passeoucasse.com. Ahmad makes friends with anyone who treats him with chocolates!