Web hosting & domain names

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Web hosting & domainS

What are the differences?

In the world of websites, the difference between a website domain name and website hosting can sometimes cause confusion. Let’s cut through the geek-speak and demystify these two related topics.

Start with a website!

When your friendly web designer crafts your website (hopefully us :-)), they will create a collection of web page files that contain the content (words and images) that you want the world to see. Web pages are written in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language), that web browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Firefox know how to display. However, just having all the files that make up a website isn’t enough. The web pages need to be stored somewhere where people can access and view them.

May I serve your pages?

When your website is ready to go live, all the web page files need to be uploaded to a special computer called a web server, that will ‘serve’ your web pages to the ‘web’. In other words, it makes your website available to the public over the internet. Website hosting is simply the storing of web pages on a web server (i.e. the files that make up your website are ‘hosted’ on the web server).

What’s in a name?

So how does everyone view your website over the internet? This is where a domain name comes in. Every web server (and there are millions of them) has a unique identifier called an IP Address. One way to think of an IP Address is like a GPS coordinate that provides an address for that particular web server. However, like GPS coordinates, IP Addresses are difficult to remember.

A domain name provides a memorable way of accessing a web server and a website stored on it. You can think of a domain name as a street address; both the GPS coordinates and the street address identify the same house, but a street address is much easier to remember! The great thing about a domain name is that you can choose the name (i.e. we have koolth.com.au). Once you have your domain name registered and it’s pointing to your web server, people can view your website by typing the domain name into any web browser.

Summary

In a nutshell, to showcase a website to the world, you need three things:

  1. A set of web pages (files) that make up your complete website
  2. A web server to ‘host’ your website files and make it available to the public (usually renewed annually)
  3. A user friendly domain name that points to the web server (usually renewed every 2-5 years).

 

ARTICLE TAGS: WEBSITE | WEB DEVELOPMENT | KOOLTH | ADELAIDE | SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Who are we?

koolth is a smart web specialist company. We empower clients with next generation online tools and transform businesses by providing powerful online experiences, expert web solutions & world-class AI education programs.

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