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Web hosting providers
rent out web space on a monthly or yearly basis just like office
space. So, the definition of web hosting is directly in its name -
it is the process of hosting web data. Essentially web hosting is
the real estate industry of the web. When you have a web site or
store data online, it is stored on a server. A server is nothing
more than a computer: generally a high powered machine optimized for
internet usage. Some companies or individuals setup their own
hosting operations from scratch, however this can be a costly and
time consuming process. This is why people turn to web hosting
providers to store web sites and
data. A web hosting provider is able to purely focus on proper
technical maintenance of the server and its connection to the
internet. Instead of worrying about up-keeping complicated server
technology, clients can focus on their business and leave the
technical work to web hosting professionals.
With thousands of web
hosting providers and thousands of service offerings, prices vary
from free to thousands of dollars a year. Some companies rely on an
expensive rock-solid hosting solution for the success of their
business. Perhaps they provide internet access, or run a high
trafficked, high content online store. Others may simply be using
the web to tell people about their company - a web brochure. Web
hosting is not only used for storing web sites however; company
databases, email, picture files, mp3's, movies, and anything that
you could put on your computer can be stored on a server. Once a
database or web site is setup, the client is able to easily access
their server space using a web publishing tool or an FTP (file
transfer protocol) tool. An
FTP tool simply put, is an application that allows you to upload
files to a server. Many of these tools are free. We will be further
elaborating on web publishing later in this article. |
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A domain is simply the
web address you type into your browser. For instance you would type
http://www.google.com/ in your browser to go to Google's web
site. The most common extensions are ".com - .net - .org.", however
there are many more. Today, domain names are easy and affordable to
reserve. The average price for a domain is anywhere from $10 to
$30. Domain names are officially managed by the worldwide
organization
ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers). When you purchase a domain name you purchase it through a
registrar that has been accredited by ICANN. A list of these
companies are available at their web site
http://www.icann.com/. Many web hosts will reserve your name for
you, but the advantage to reserving your domain through a pure
domain registrar is in the versatility of being able to switch
hosting providers, and most likely get a better price. |