Web Hosting Guide

This guide is to assist beginners about web hosting and introduce them to information regarding the nature of the web hosting process. It will cover various components and processes including; domain registration, the features to look in a web host and what type of plan would suit your most.

Over recent years information technology has experienced an unprecedented degree of change, with the advent of the World Wide Web and the Internet. The emergence of these technologies has enabled individuals and businesses to socialize and communicate in a whole new way. In doing so, it opened up new opportunities for anyone who was willing to exploit it.

The Internet

So what is the Internet? The Internet is huge network comprised of millions of computers, accessible from around the globe. Every time you dial into your Internet Service Provider, you become part of this vast network. This is made possible by the low cost of computing hardware and development of software protocols such as TCP/IP (Transfer Control protocol/Internet Protocol).

Initially, use of the Internet was limited to universities and institutions, and then the military become a significant user. Eventually, the US government made the Internet available to the general public and for commercial purposes. Since then, businesses have realized the potential of offering new and better services to their clients, so investments was made into enhancing and further development of Internet infrastructures. This generated competition between communication carriers, hardware and software vendors. The result was remarkable increase in bandwidth (data carrying capacity) and costs came down to within reasonable levels so it could be affordable.

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is often perceived as being the Internet, however, this is not true. The World Wide Web is essentially a common standard for computer users to locate and view multimedia-based documents. Although the Internet was developed more than three decades ago, the introduction World Wide Web was made in 1990. Today, it forms the foundations of a global network centric society and uses the Internet as a transport vehicle.

For users to access your web site, it must be online and constantly connected to Internet in one form or another. This is where web hosting comes in. Web service providers are dedicated professionals who offer services to host your web site and provide infrastructure to make it all possible. The benefits are discussed later.

Why Web Hosting?

Web hosting is an important step forwards to become an on-line participant on the World Wide Web and, of course, the Internet. For users (or customers) to be able to browse your contents, they must have specific access and an address to locate you. The purpose of the web hosting company is to store your web data online on web servers and serve information as requested by the public.

The attractive aspect of the Internet is that there is no border or geographic restraints to do commerce on the World Wide Web. It is also a relatively cheap medium to showcase ideas and conduct electronic commercial activities. The great attraction of the Internet is the mass audience, where users now number into the hundreds of millions, and technologies introduced allows tasks to be done in real time - compared to traditional methods eg paper based mail can be replaced by e-mail. The opportunities opened by such a mass audience is causing business to fiercely compete with each other. Small businesses can now compete with larger ones and reap the additional revenues.