How Does Web Hosting Work?
With your own web space, websites or private cloud storage can set up – if you know how hosters work and what you need.
Of course, you can also operate a website without your own web space, for example via service providers such as wordpress.com – but it is always a very limited solution. If you want to know exactly what web hosts do and how it works, here are all the basics.
• How does web hosting work?
• Rent whole computers?
• The most important services
• Other optional services
• What do I need for what purpose?
• How do I use my web space?
How does web hosting work?
Web hosting is all about getting your own “place on the internet”. To achieve this, access to a computer that is permanently accessible via the Internet via one and the same address. And the web hosts, offering such servers, the providers, for rent. Services and storage space can then use on the servers. In practice, one does not usually rent an entire computer that is located in a data center, but only a certain amount of storage space (web space) and various services. These services typically include web servers, email, and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) in even the smallest leases. And very important: a domain. As you know them from the home network. Computers on the Internet can reach via IP addresses of the type 192.169.178.1. For such an address to be accessible via a name, such as http://www.example.com, a domain must be registered and registered with the Domain Name System (DNS). Navicosoft is providing the Fastest Web Hosting Australia.
And this is exactly where the difference to your home computer lies: This gets a different IP address from the DSL provider from time to time. The computer at home can also be addressed with a fixed domain name via dynamic DNS (DDNS): Whenever you are assigned a new IP by the provider, your computer Why is this important? Very simple: You can, for example, use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) for the website and cloud storage – you then no longer need web hosting. However, this is less reliable because the website is only as fast as your DSL upload bandwidth. The device must always run and there are of course security concerns.
As web space via a DDNS service, your own NAS can also serve.
Renting a whole computer?
Real rented web space has a whole range of advantages. The first question that arises is what can rent. The bandwidth ranges from service and storage space to virtual servers and real complete computers. Both real and virtualized computers are completely oversized for private individuals, smaller projects, and above all, any web hosting newcomer.
On real (dedicated servers) and virtual servers you can take everything into your own hands, but you also have to set up and maintain web servers, e-mail and so on yourself – it’s a lot of effort and expensive on top of that. Only the normal offers of storage space and services are interesting.
For a better assessment, here are two concrete offers: With Navicosoft, the packages start at AUD 11.6 per month – it is similar with all other major providers.
The most important services
No websites could be published because the basis is always a web server. There are often two options. If you want a dynamic website, for example, a blog with WordPress or an online shop with osCommerce. Systems intended for beginners usually offer the option of simply activating a “web application”. If so, it is guaranteed to be on offer. If not, you need two things: a (MySQL) database and support for the scripting language PHP. With the PHP, web and database server equipment, you can already operate a large part of any web application. And considering the prices, you shouldn’t miss out on these features. Even if you don’t need them yet, because a later move often involves immense effort. Navicosoft is providing the best Web Hosting Services in Melbourne.
In addition to the storage capacity, you should also keep an eye on the transfer volume – even if most offers meanwhile, do without a limit or set it very high.
An example of a more complex backend of your own web space.
Pretty much all other services and features are initially secondary. Exception: If your website is expected to have 10,000 or more visitors a day immediately, you must also pay attention to the performance of the offer. Not every provider immediately reveals which processors or RAM are used. But as I said: For most private users, this hardly matters. Navicosoft is the Best Web Hosting Company in Melbourne.
Unfortunately, a very important point cannot be clarified so easily: Every provider offers its own administration interface – and this plays an enormous role in finding your way around, especially for beginners. Unfortunately, the only thing that helps here is: try it out, if possible, and otherwise look for empirical values on the net. As a rule of thumb: End user-oriented providers such as Navicosoft etc are often more beginner-friendly than smaller hosting specialists. Other optional services
You could (and have) written entire books about web hosting, but the most important keywords and additional services to look out for can be dealt with very quickly:
user accounts are Partly regulated for backend and FTP.
SSL/TLS Certificates Allow easy setup of HTTPS.
Web statistics Evaluation of visitors and page views.
Scripting Besides PHP, Perl and Python could also be relevant.
WebDAV Integrate web storage locally as a drive.
SSH access Allows access to the web space via a terminal.
Cronjobs Automatic execution of commands (task scheduling).
database management Preferably phpMyAdmin because it is the standard par excellence.
Subdomains Allow addresses like project.example.com.
Everything to do with e-mails is inconveniently equipped by all providers, but there is one last popular area of application that it may be worth paying attention to separately: cloud storage. You can definitely run your own instance of the Dropbox alternative with a database and PHP. Navicosoft is a keyword that clearly speaks for an offer and offers Website Hosting Services in Melbourne.
How do I use my web space?
Once such an offer has been booked, what happens next? Again, there are several options here. The simplest is via the administration interface, i.e. the provider’s own backend. Here you log in as normal in the browser and can usually start web applications such as WordPress with a click and upload files via web file managers. But as I said, it depends on the provider.
The standard way is still via FTP and database management. Using the ancient File Transfer Protocol, you simply connect to the folder structure of your web space and upload or download files. Generally, there is a folder called ” Web Root “, ” www “, or ” htdocs ” (for hypertext documents). This directory is called up in the browser when your domain is called up, e.g. example.com/. If there is a file called “index.php” or “index.html” in this folder, it will be called by default.
Typical structure in web space, here via FTP: The “www” folder contains various websites to which individual domains link.
However, modern web applications such as WordPress also require a database. Again, this varies from provider to provider. There will be a link to database management somewhere in the backend – this is the second important place. If the already mentioned standard tool phpMyAdmin can be found here, all the better – because many instructions on the net refer to it exactly. Navicosoft is providing the Fastest Web Hosting Australia.
To get started, there is also a kind of standard workflow that can be used to install most applications: First, the files of a content management system, for example, are processed (CMS) and copied to the base folder. Then you call up the installation routine – this usually works simply via “example.com/cms” if the software is in the “cms” subfolder. The installation rarely has to be started more precisely, for example via an address such as “example.com/cms/installation” – that depends on the system. And now either a complete setup is started directly or the message appears that no database exists. If the installation routine cannot create these by itself, you must create them yourself in the database administration. And since it is usually enough to assign a name, this is also very easy.
So again in brief: upload the web application via FTP, create an empty database, call up the web application in the browser – go through the installation. That doesn’t always work, but mostly.
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