It is very common that people who are developing a website or thinking about doing so, have some doubts about hosting. There are many technical terms and a number of options, which makes the subject more difficult.
In this article, you will understand the key terms technically used to host a website with a provider – that is, make the website available online and there make it accessible to the world. We believe that this may help you in finding the best hosting service for your site.
You’ll understand what hosting is, what domain is, what types of hosting are available, how to choose the best provider and other information. Check out!
1. What is hosting?
Put simply, hosting is a virtual environment used to store all the files of a website and make it accessible over the internet. A website consists of a series of files, such as texts, images, and codes, which together forms the pages we are used to seeing on the internet. Hosting, which covers a number of features, is rented by hosting companies, also called hosting providers.
What is hosting provider?
A hosting provider (also called a host) is a company that provides the technologies and services required for websites to be available for access on the internet. Sites are hosted or stored, on special computers called servers.
Most hosting companies require you to have your own domain to publish a website. Anyone who does not have a domain can register one through an entity such as enom.com or by a hosting company, which often offers free domain in the hosting plan.
2. What is domain?
The domain is the web address of a website, a set of words that netizens put in the browser to get to the desired site. For example: closecrowds.com.
Knowing how to choose a domain is very important, almost as much as your own brand. It needs to be easy to remember and written, and be available at .com or at least at some of the most common extensions.
If you have a brand but do not yet have a website, it is worthwhile to register your domain anyway. First, to ensure exclusivity, since third parties could register this domain before you. Second, because your domain can be used in company emails (ex: contact@yourdomain.com), giving more credibility to your business.
How to register a domain?
Registering a domain is relatively simple: just enter the hostgator.com (or any hosting company), check the availability of the domain you want, fill in some data and buy it for a cost starts at $ 10-20 a year.
There are a variety of extensions (Top Level Domains or TLDs), in addition to the traditional “.com “. These extensions are the terminations found to the right of the point in the web address (.net or .io, for example). It is possible to acquire domains for individuals and legal entities, with generic endings (e.g., .com and .net), for universities (.edu), for professionals (.adv), NGOs (.org) and so on.
It is always better to register a domain with only “.com”, which is widely used in the world and refers to any business entity. The domain may also have an extension referring to the country of origin of the domain. In India, for example, it is “.in”, in the UK, “.co.uk”, and so on.
However, attention: It is very important to think about the best domain option for your business, since the extension, in addition to defining the type of business, will also help people to memorize the website address. Investing in “.com” is highly recommended as it is the most popular extensions around the world. Registering more than one extension can also be a way to protect your name from third-party use.
3. What is a DNS?
At some point, you will also wonder what DNS is. This is the acronym for Domain Name System, a standard protocol that translates IP addresses into domain names. Because IP addresses contain numbers, they would be very difficult to decorate, so you have to turn them into the domain.
Let’s say that DNS is like a phonebook for the internet. If you know a person’s name, but do not know their number, you can simply look it up in the phone book, right? DNS works on the same logic: it relates the domain typed in the browser to the IP of the machine where the site is hosted.
If you registered your domain in one company and want to host the site in another, you will need to know the DNS of your hosting in order to point the domain to it.
4. What are the types of hosting?
After understanding the difference between domain and hosting, we can now talk about the main types of hosting that exist today in the market.
Shared Web Hosting
The shared hosting is ideal for individuals and small businesses, seeking online presence but do not have a big budget. It has a more affordable price just because there is a single web server sharing between multiple sites.
In shared hosting services, an individual server caters to different hosting accounts. In most cases, each account has an allocated amount of resources, such as disk space and bandwidth. This type of hosting plan is suitable for institutional websites, personal or small electronic trades.
In some cases, because of shared resources, abuse by one site may affect all sites hosted on the same server. To avoid this kind of problem, companies monitor servers continuously and act quickly in these situations by removing the site that has crossed the boundaries.
Dedicated Hosting
As its name implies, dedicated hosting allows individuals and businesses to lease the entire server on an exclusive basis. With dedicated hosting, you can select your operating system, customize the software and make all the settings according to your needs.
With hosting on dedicated servers you can also have advanced control over the server without the need to invest in your own equipment and infrastructure. Dedicated servers are most popular among high traffic websites, e-commerce, gaming sites, video streaming and other sites and applications that consume many resources.
Being dedicated, this type of hosting requires specialized professionals in server management. For this, it is possible to hire a specialist or rely on this service from the hosting company itself. Management can be hardware, software, or both.
Hosting in the cloud
With advances in cloud computing technologies, the hosting in the cloud has emerged as a solution in an effective and good quality cost. Unlike shared and dedicated hosting servers, cloud hosting is done through multiple servers that act as a single system, connected to each other.
A cloud hosting server is more stable because of load balancing, higher security features, non-dependency on a single server as a point of failure, and also the ability to increase or decrease server resources according to your needs.
Cloud hosting services are usually charged based on usage and it is easy to scale your costs according to your website traffic needs. In simple terms, people who stay in the cloud pay only for the resources they use, such as the electricity tariff, for example (according to consumption, the bill goes up or down monthly).
VPS Hosting
The VPS or Virtual Private Server is a type of hosting intermediate between shared and dedicated. It has some features of a dedicated, with regard to advanced permissions and control of the hosting environment. On the other hand, the environment is virtualized and works inside a physical server, shared with other VPSs.
VPS is less expensive than a dedicated server but superior to shared hosting. Because of these features, VPS is ideal for sites and applications that need a configurable environment but do not necessarily consume many features. You’ll see VPS plans with robust features, but you may also see lower VPSs than a shared hosting.
As a resource-rich hosting, high traffic is supported by a VPS.
Reseller Hosting
Resale is suitable for people who wish to start their own hosting business or web design and development agencies who host their customer sites. In reseller hosting you can divide the resources into distinct plans and sell them to your customers, relying on the services and technology of the hosting company. No investment in infrastructure is required.
Usually hosting companies offer management and financial panels that allow you to issue invoices (charges) to your customers, with their own brand and prices. They also usually make available other products for resale, such as domains, for example.re sit amet.
