Since I will be blogging about web hosting servers and service basics, tips and tricks, hosting guide and more, I though I will kick off with a basic definition of web hosting.
In order to better grasp the concept of web hosting, it's important to get a little history behind it. Don't worry, I won't bore you with a lot of details as I will keep things short and skip to the basics quickly.
When more than one computer became inter-connected and needed to serve files containing various information, the web is born. Web hosting started when individuals and organisations needed a server to host files that can be served to the web. A server is a computer running a system capable of serving files over the web to other computers. Serving files requires the use of a protocol. Just like we need a common language to talk to each other, computers need a protocol to be able to exchange information. There are many Internet protocols available for this purpose. The most popular is HTTP.
The server I mentioned, has the advantage of being well connected to the Internet and capable of running an OS and software to "serve" files, such as HTML, images, PDFs...etc to computers requesting those files using a browser, such as Internet Explorer, FireFox or Chrome. Now, why wouldn't people or companies host those files themselves? keeping in mind that computers are very cheap nowadays and many Operating Systems flavours capable of running a hosting service are free?
Running a web server is more than just installing an Operating System such Linux or Windows on a server. Beside requiring backbone connection to the Internet, which means being well connected and able to serve files on high bandwidth, they need to be maintained on many aspects; pacthes, security updates, backup to name back a few. This means that there was a need to an organisation or individuals where this service can be assigned to while companies can focus on their core business.
Since than, many companies have appeared around the world offering web hosting services. Now, web hosting service is a pretty broad name. In other words, there are many types of web hosting services that is on offer. It starts from free web hosting, shared hosting, virtual private hosting, e-commerce hosting and dedicated hosting. I'll go into more details on each hosting type on a different post, since details on these types area little beyond the scope of web hosting definition and requires a dedicated post.
In order to better grasp the concept of web hosting, it's important to get a little history behind it. Don't worry, I won't bore you with a lot of details as I will keep things short and skip to the basics quickly.
When more than one computer became inter-connected and needed to serve files containing various information, the web is born. Web hosting started when individuals and organisations needed a server to host files that can be served to the web. A server is a computer running a system capable of serving files over the web to other computers. Serving files requires the use of a protocol. Just like we need a common language to talk to each other, computers need a protocol to be able to exchange information. There are many Internet protocols available for this purpose. The most popular is HTTP.
The server I mentioned, has the advantage of being well connected to the Internet and capable of running an OS and software to "serve" files, such as HTML, images, PDFs...etc to computers requesting those files using a browser, such as Internet Explorer, FireFox or Chrome. Now, why wouldn't people or companies host those files themselves? keeping in mind that computers are very cheap nowadays and many Operating Systems flavours capable of running a hosting service are free?
Running a web server is more than just installing an Operating System such Linux or Windows on a server. Beside requiring backbone connection to the Internet, which means being well connected and able to serve files on high bandwidth, they need to be maintained on many aspects; pacthes, security updates, backup to name back a few. This means that there was a need to an organisation or individuals where this service can be assigned to while companies can focus on their core business.
Since than, many companies have appeared around the world offering web hosting services. Now, web hosting service is a pretty broad name. In other words, there are many types of web hosting services that is on offer. It starts from free web hosting, shared hosting, virtual private hosting, e-commerce hosting and dedicated hosting. I'll go into more details on each hosting type on a different post, since details on these types area little beyond the scope of web hosting definition and requires a dedicated post.
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