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When you’re just getting started building (or even just owning) a website, a term you’ll soon come across is ‘web hosting‘. Essentially, every single website is (at least in part) made up of a collection of computer files that have to reside on a specialized computer (usually called a ‘server’) that anyone on the internet can access anytime they like — therefore enabling your website (those computer files) to be seen.
Every website on the internet needs web hosting: which is rarely ever free and something you definitely don’t want to try to set up on your own computer…
What is web hosting? – Everything You Need to Know:
– (note: video credits to Topher DeRosia – creator of HeroPress)
Video Transcript:
Hi! This is Topher with WinningWP. In this video we’re going to answer the question “What is Web Hosting? Everything You Need to Know Explained”. First I’d like to take a look at the problem. Here we have a cool website. I spent tons of time on it as you can tell and now I want other people to see it. In order for that to happen I need some special software called a web server and I need to install it on a computer that’s big enough for lots of people to visit my website and then I need a really expensive internet connection and already you can tell this is a terrible idea. I just want somebody to look at my website. Now in the early days of the web people actually did build their own web servers in their basements just like in the early days of cars people built their own cars which is how we ended up with this three-wheeled gem and in the early days of aircraft people built their own aircraft which is why we ended up with wheels on the roof. These days it’s far more complicated just like cars and airplanes are far more complicated. Look at this mess! Nobody wants to do this they just want to put up their website. So in response some people started taking care of this for you just like companies started making cars and airplanes and other companies started delivering gas and electricity to your house. And now, we have places that look like this. Each one of these little rows is a server and they’re all connected with a huge internet connection and then they sell access to all of this stuff to you. But they wrap it up in a nice pretty little package which is why these days hosting looks like this. You pay . a month and you click a get started button. No software, no computers, no wires; just pay a little bit of money and you get a little bit of space. So what really happens is that you take this webpage that you built and you copy it onto someone else’s computer called a server and then that computer can be visited by everybody on the web and you don’t have to think about it. That’s the wonderful thing a great analogy is the gas company. You don’t know how oil comes out of the ground and gets turned into gas and comes out your stove. You don’t care. You turn your stove on and it works and you pay a fee every month. It’s also a little similar to renting a storage unit because you have to store your website there. But you don’t have to think about keeping the roof solid or the walls solid or security or any of that. You pay somebody twenty hours a month and you get a garage. Web-hosting blends those two ideas. You store your website in somebody’s “garage” and then they provide access to the rest of the world so that they can see it. Let’s review real quick. Web pages need special software and very high speed internet. You don’t want that in your house. You don’t want to manage hardware, software, and security. Web hosting is someone else managing all that headache. It’s similar to both renting a storage unit and paying your gas bill. You pay a relatively small monthly fee and someone else takes care of making it so that the whole world can see your webpage. If you’d like to learn more about WordPress check out WinningWP.com.
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