To create a website, you first need a domain and hosting. Let’s have a clear idea about what domain hosting is and how it works. Today, because of e-commerce, we no longer have to travel from market to market. Almost everything including clothes, electronic products, food is available on websites these days. These products reach our homes within moments of ordering. Make our business or organization more known and accessible. It is expanding our business and increasing profits.
What is Domain
You must give your website a name in order to create it. And the name of that website is domain. The domain is the name by which people will find your website. For example, we find Google through www.google.com. We find Facebook through www.facebook.com. The name by which your website will be visited is your website domain.
Domains are not limited to .com, but different types of domains are used by people on different websites. For general or business purposes, everyone uses.com. However, people use different domain extensions for different types of websites, such as: .org for organizations, .edu for educational institutions, .net for networking sites, .info for information sites, etc.
What is Hosting
When you buy a domain you buy a name for your website. Your website should be hosted on a PC that will be on 24 hours and 365 days a year. Having your website on a constant computer is a convenient feature provided by hosting firms. Hosting companies provide this service for a monthly or yearly fee. Different companies provide hosting at different prices.
The space you buy for your website is hosting. If you want, you can have your website on your home PC, but is your home PC open 24 hours 365 days? If you host the website on your PC, your visitors will not be able to view your website if your computer is turned off or there is no internet connection. The PC on which you host your website should always be turned on. Your visitors can see your website only when the PC hosting your site is turned on.
How does Domain Hosting Work?
How does Domain Work
When we enter a website address in the browser it is converted to IP. Then the DNS server is searched for data with that IP. DNS data is used to find out which hosting server the website is hosted on. When all the data reaches the browser software, the browser sends an http/https request to the server. The server then sends the requested data to the browser. The browser renders and displays that data.
How does Hosting Work
For a website to appear in front of us, a lot of work has to be done behind our eyes. The work that is done first is the domain and then the hosting. Hosting is much more work and responsibility than domain. Because the hosting has to do all the work from finding the data requested to the hosting through the domain to processing.
When a web address is entered into the browser to visit a website the following happens: –
1. Domain names are converted to IPs.
2. Depending on that IP, information about hosting is collected on the DNS server.
3. Based on that information the server location is derived.
4. If the server location is found, the request is made for the website file at that location.
5. Requests are handled using the http/https security protocol.
6. Then the hosting mechanism manages the servers included in it and finds the website files according to the request.
7. Submit that file to the browser after that.
8. The browser renders that file through the DOM and displays the website according to the style it was created in.
Different types of Hosting
Free Hosting:
You can utilize hosting for free from certain hosting providers. But there are some limitations like Bandwidth/Monthly Traffic is very low. Security is not tight. Don’t get any domain name either.
Shared Hosting:
Shared hosting is the most popular and common. The hosting we are using or the hosting offered by hosting providers in general is all shared hosting. A professional or a large site needs a certain amount of service from a self-contained server.
Bringing all these benefits to your own server becomes quite expensive. Shared Hosting is suitable for them. The security of this server is less because there are many client sites together. Besides, you will not get unlimited database, email, bandwidth, all are limited.
Reseller Hosting:
Reseller hosting is basically a virtual hosting account created for you to buy hosting from others and sell it to other customers. Usually the company you buy reseller hosting from will provide you with complete tools to manage the hosting to represent your company as a hosting company. It’s a simple method.
Dedicated Hosting:
Dedicated hosting requires dedicated servers. It is very expensive. If your website is very large and needs strong security then this hosting is for you. Here you will find hardware worth your cost. The busier the site, the more powerful hardware it will need.
2 Types of Dedicated Hosting—
Managed Hosting: Hosting providers will do everything like security, server setup, network configuration, installing any software etc. They must pay a particular amount of money as payment for this.
Unmanaged Hosting: If you are a server administrator, that means if you can do all the work of your web server yourself, then it will be Unmanaged Hosting. You’ll make huge financial savings from it. Server management can be learned. There are thousands of tutorials on the web, if you want you can learn and run your own work.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting:
Between shared and dedicated hosting is VPS hosting. Dedicated servers provide all the hardware resources to you alone and your site resides on one server. And there will be thousands of other sites with your site in shared hosting.
VPS hosting usually has a dedicated server shared by several people. For example a server with 16 GB RAM gives you 4 GB and the rest to 3 others thus sharing/limiting all resources. Just like a dedicated server, you can install almost any software on your own. Generally, when you don’t need all the resources of a dedicated server, take a hosting package like this, then it will save some money.
Cloud Hosting:
Cloud hosting stands as the most popular and trusted hosting service among bloggers and website owners today. Its performance and speed are very high quality, and this hosting is very secure. Currently, cloud hosting is highly prominent.
In cloud hosting many web servers are kept together and hence you can increase or decrease some server requirements like CPU, RAM or storage as per your need. In this way, when your website traffic or visitors increase, you can easily increase the performance of your web server.
Names of some popular Domain Hosting Providers
Where to buy Domain Hosting or what are the names of some popular hosting providers are discussed below, from where you can buy Domain Hosting.
1. Hostinger
2. Namecheap
3. Bluehost
4. GoDaddy
5. A2 Hosting
6. DigitalOcean
7. DreamHost
8. HostGator
Things to keep in mind while buying Hosting
Some things you need to keep in mind while buying hosting are discussed in detail below.
1. Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data a website can access per second. The more bandwidth your website has, the more people can access your website without any problem, while the less bandwidth, the slower the website speed.
2. Storage
Storage needs to be given special attention while buying hosting. All the data you upload to the website is stored in the data hosting storage. So you have to take a little more disk space or storage before buying hosting.
3. Uptime
Up time means your website is always online or available on the internet. Sometimes the website server goes down, in which case the content of the website does not show. So you have to pay attention to this matter. Most hosting companies these days offer a 99.99% Uptime Guarantee.
4. Backup
Before buying web hosting, know well whether that hosting provider is giving you backup facility, if there is a backup facility, if there is any problem on your website, you can restore it after deleting all the content.
5. Customer Support
Customer support is an important issue. Customer support is needed for any problem with your hosting. That’s why you should purchase hosting from a well-known hosting company, although almost every hosting company tries to provide 24/7 customer service.
6. Moneyback Guarantee
Moneyback guarantee is very important. Many companies offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Before buying, make sure that the company offers a moneyback guarantee.
7. Control Panel
A control panel is required to manage the website well. cPanel is the easiest and most feature-rich control panel in web hosting, so always try to buy hosting with cPanel.
Nowadays in this age of technology it is impossible to run without internet. A website is required to use the internet. And domain-hosting is a very important thing for building this website which I have explained in detail in this article.