Hosting is where your website lives on the internet. This includes the actual computers and hardware that runs your website.
Machine
You can run your website from your laptop or computer. This is not a good idea due to redundancy. Website servers have the same components as a normal computer and are optimised to fit into server racks. They don’t have keyboards or monitors as they can be accessed by network or the technician a can plug them in.
Data centre
Hosting is complex and requires dedicated environments to be secure and reliable. More information
The best way to mange your hosting is to hire some space from a hosting company which will manage most things for you. If your website gets big, you will require specialist advice about what the best setup is for you.
Your website can be physically hosted anywhere in the world.
There are hundreds of different hosts and hosting packages. Please look at Hosting – how to choose the best host for you for more information.
Different approaches to hosting:
- Software as a service – you hire software and hosting is included
- Shared hosting: this is the cheapest form of hosting and involves sharing your machine and resources with other websites. If another website on the shared server hogs the server resources, your website will be affected.
- Reseller – better fo multiple websites
- Managed Hosting – this refers to the management of server software and monitoring that applies to the following hosting approaches
- Virtual private server: A type of Network hosting that allows you to run your own hosting environment in a similar way to dedicated server hosting but is still shared.
- Dedicated server: this is where you have your own machine or multiple machines to host only your website. This is more expensive and can handle higher traffic.
- Cloud hosting: this comes in varied forms but basically involves a large network of computers that are integrated to one large super computer. AWS is a n example.
- Colocation: renting space in a data centre for yoru own machines
