Website Hosting
Knowledge of website hosting is essential if you plan to make your website available for the world to see.
It's one thing to build a website using HTML, but so far in this tutorial, everything we've done has been on our own local machine. Unless you have your own web server with a permanent high-speed connection to the Internet, you'll need a website hosting provider to host your website.
If you already have a hosting provider that's great! But, if you don't, you'll need to start looking for one.
Basic Web Hosting Concepts
Whether you already have a web host or you're just beginning, you should know at least a little bit about the following hosting concepts:
- The different types of web hosting (i.e the differences between shared hosting, dedicated servers, and managed hosting)
- How to choose a good web hosting provider
- Domain names (i.e. yourwebsite.com)
- FTP - for uploading your website to the hosting provider
- Availability - how to monitor your web site's availability
- Technical support - what to expect from a hosting provider
It can be very difficult for a beginner to find information about this. Even some experienced web developers don't know exactly what it is their web host does. I recommend that you make some effort to become familiar with the basic web hosting concepts, such as those outlined above.
If you need a hosting provider, our partner site, ZappyHost provides some of the best prices on the web. Check out these hosting plans.
Getting your own Web Server
If you're serious about developing web pages, you should think about installing a web server (if you haven't already got one).
A web server will enable you to mimick a hosting environment. You'll be able to browse your website on your local computer using http:// and your own domain or sub-domain.
You'll also be able to do many other things, like run server-side scripts such as PHP or ColdFusion. Not to mention, connect to a database.
To learn the basics of web servers, see my quick web server tutorial.