Web Hosting Explained Like Never Before
Is web-hosting a physical or virtual solution?
To understand what web hosting is, you first need to understand what a website is. A website will consist of a set of documents. These documents can be code files, images, videos, etc.
All the documents constituting your site will belong to the same “root” folder. This folder will then be able to contain other folders themselves.
To be convinced, let’s look at what a basic PrestaShop installation looks like, for example:
All the documents constituting your PrestaShop site will be located inside a primary “Prestashop” folder.
This folder will then contain other files and documents. The subfolders will still be able to contain other files and documents and etc.
The different elements contained in the root folder will then work together. Thus, the various pages of your site will often use a page contained in a folder, and files contained in a particular folder of your installation.
The premises and the production
If you download the PrestaShop software, as I did for the previous example, or even a WordPress installation, then you have all the elements of your site already there.
However, for the moment, your “Prestashop” or “WordPress” folder is located on your own computer, only you can access it, just as only you can access your other files on your computer a priori.
Working with your files on your computer is called working “locally”. This is generally opposed to working in “production” or “live”, that is to say working on a site already present on the web.
The server and the client
How will a user be able to access your website?
Open a browser (Google Chrome for example) and type a request, that is to say, ask to access your site by entering for example the address (URL) of your site. The computer that will request access to a web page is called the client.
On the other side, there’s going to be a server. The server will be the computer on which the requested site will be hosted.
A server is therefore also a computer, but which will have quite special characteristics. First, a server will (theoretically) be connected to the Internet 24/7 so that your site is always accessible. Second, a server is usually going to be much more powerful than a “normal” computer.
The role of the server will be to host your site and generate (if necessary) and send the web pages requested by your users.
What is a web host/hosting?
We say that the server will “host” your website. If you’ve got everything right here, you should be wondering if you can’t be your own server yourself.
In theory, this is quite possible: you can turn your computer into a server and host your own site yourself and upload it yourself to the Internet.
However, this is strongly discouraged. First of all, you would need a very powerful computer and internet connection that has to be always up and running in order for your visitors to properly access your website, and that would already cost you a lot of money.
Then, you would need a lot of in-depth knowledge of network architecture, in particular in order to properly configure various aspects of your hosting and your website, in order on the one hand to have an operational site and on the other hand a secure site.
Why do I need professional hosting?
Hosting your website on a server will allow you to make it accessible to everyone via the Internet.
We will use companies specializing in this field for two main reasons: reliability and cost.
Indeed, the (best) hosting companies first had to make significant investments to obtain powerful and reliable servers.
Then, these hosts will offer to rent us part of their server, or even an entire server in some cases, so that we can place our installation there.
The machines that are used to do MRIs are extremely expensive. So when you need to have an MRI, you aren’t going to buy the machine yourself; instead, you will go to a specialized clinic, and pay a certain price for the use of this machine.
The hosts, in addition to having very powerful servers and connections, will generally also offer third-party services such as customer service at your service, automatic installations of certain software, access to ready-made site themes, etc.
