Choosing web hosting for your domain can be a real challenge

1. What exactly is web hosting?

Today we all live in the internet world where there are all types of internet applications. These applications also known as web applications, do all types of different jobs like booking hotel rooms for our vacation, flight / railway / bus / taxi reservations, buying clothes online, paying our telephone & electricity bills, paying our kids school fee and so on. Although these web applications do not have everything in common but there is one thing which remains in common between all of them. This is – “They all work through the internet”, turn off your internet connection and you will find these web application not working at all. 

Opening Expedia Website When The Internet Connection Is ON

Test – We take the simple example of ‘vacation tour booking’ application – ‘Expedia’. Simply open http://www.expedia.co.in in your browser. The website opens to select your vacation package, now turn off your internet connection and try to open the same website again. This time no website comes in your browser and you will see the message “Server Not Found”. In simple terms it means – ‘Expedia’ application needs an internet connection to work. You can test this example for any other application and will come to a conclusion that all need an internet connection to work.

Tip – Application are of different types but the one which needs an internet connection are known as ‘web applications’. A web application in general is called as a website. In the late part of this article we will refer them as ‘websites’. 

So after reading above paragraphs you have got a question which says – “Web applications or websites need internet connection to work and the work of the internet is to bring information from around the world to our computer, Smartphone, Tablet in digital format. Therefore the internet is actually bringing the information from the website (which is located at some other place) to us”.

This location of the website is called as web hosting. So the meaning of web hosting is the location of the website or the place where the website resides.

Opening Expedia Website When The Internet Connection Is OFF

2. How a web hosting works?

A web hosting is the home of a website. If we go into a bit deeper we say it as a space in the hard disk of the computer where the website is kept. This computer can be an ordinary computer and is mapped by the domain registrar of the website in such a manner so that when someone opens the website URL in the browser, the domain registrar directs the browser to this hard disk area, which keeps the website.  

Tip – Domain registrar is the internet service which registers a website name for you. The major work of domain registrar is to direct the request of domain, made from a browser (when somebody types a website name in the browser and press enter), to its web hosting.

Test – open a website address www.expedia.co.in in your browser. Once you click enter button of your keyboard, the domain registrar receives a request from your browser that it want to open ‘Expedia’ website. It then provides the location of the website i.e. web hosting, to your browser so that it can open the website.

3. Putting them in action

Now it’s time to put your knowledge into action. Open www.yogihosting.com in your browser window and register a website domain. After that add a web hosting to your yogihosting account. Web hosting comes in 2 main types a) Windows hosting b) Linux hosting. They do not differ much, just a change in the operating system. Once your hosting is set up, you can start making your website. 

Tip – A website is made up of several web pages. The first page, which is called whenever you open the website URL in the browser, is the ‘index.htm’ page. So you must design your index.htm page in HTML language and upload it to your web hosting. Please note that to upload your page you will have to create an FTP account in your yogihosting account. Then connect it with any ftp client software like ‘Filezilla’. Use filezilla to upload the index.htm page to your web hosting.

Test – Here we will design a short web page for your website. This is the index.htm page which is the first page of your website. So just open ‘notepad application’ and  

<htm>

<head></head>

<body>

          <h1>Welcome To My Website</h1>

          <div>This is my website which i am currently designing. Hope you have enjoyed. Thanks</div>

</body>

</html>

Save it as ‘index.htm’ in your computer. Upload it to your web hosting with filezilla. Test it by opening your website in your browser.

Websites can be very big consisting of millions of web pages. You can design and develop as many pages by using html or dynamic programming languages like php, asp.net, jquery etc. For people having no coding and programming knowledge, they can use website builder or apps like wordpress and drupal to design their website easily without anyone’s help.