What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a service which allows you to host your web page or website on the web server to make it available on the internet. Companies who provide this service is known as Web Host / Web Hosting Provider. Web host maintains your server and keeps it active so that your site will be available 24/7/365.
Why do you need web hosting service?
If you want a website for your business, you will require a hosting service so that your website is available and accessible by everyone across the globe.
Once a website is made, it is required to be uploaded on a hosting server. Hosting companies help you buy a server. In much simpler words, hosting will place your website on the World Wide Web.
Steps to host a website on a server
- Register your domain for your website using any domain registrar
- Choose a hosting server to run your site
- Link your domain to point to hosting server
- Upload and publish your website for the web
Step 1: Register domain name for your business
Firstly you need a domain name for your website. You can register a domain name with the help of domain registrar’s on the web. You need to pay yearly cost for this server usually it cost around 700 Rs. /year (10 USD/year). There are lots of domain extensions like .com, .in, .org, .edu etc. .COM is most popular domain extension.
There are lots of domain extensions like .com, .in, .org, .edu etc. .COM is most popular domain extension. You can book any geo TLD like .in if you want to make your site for India. Geo TLD will help you to get more traffic from search engines. That’s why SEO companies will recommend you that.
Step 2: Choose hosting server to run your site
Once you developed your website with the help of web developer, it’s time to choose the best hosting server for your website. There are different types of web hosting services available to choose from.
- Shared web hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
Shared Web Hosting: Shared web hosting service is best for small business as it’s most cheap service to get started. Here you get best hosting features at the cheapest cost. Cheapest web hosting per year starts just ₹ 49/month.
VPS Hosting: When you grow your website, then shared hosting service will not be beneficial for you. Then you can go with VPS hosting service where you get dedicated hosting features at an affordable cost. This is the best option for E-commerce web sites and high traffic sites. VPS plans start ₹1100 /month.
Dedicated Hosting: When you are having huge traffic and you need a separate server with your own customized hardware then you can go with this option. This is a costly solution and it starts ₹10,000 /month.
Cloud Hosting: This is a technology revolution in hosting sector. Where you do not have to pay for huge resources if you are not using it. This is the best option for every business so that they do not have to worry about will my server able to handle this traffic? This starts ₹800 /month
Step 3: Link your domain to point to hosting server
Once you have taken web hosting service for your domain, now it’s time to link your domain to your hosting server. Here DNS comes into play. Ask your hosting providers for name server details of their hosting server. You have to add these name server records in your domain control panel. You can take help of your domain registrar support team in this. Once this change was done you need to wait for 24-72 hours as this is normal propagation time required for this.
Step 4: Upload and publish your website for the web
You can upload your site using any FTP client like Filezilla. You can take help from technical support desk for this. Once you uploaded web content to the server then your site will be live for all.