Web Hosting 101

A Beginner's Guide To Web Hosting

........................................................................................................................................

Where Do I Start?

If you are new to Web Hosting or new to the Internet, we recommend that you invest about 5-10 minutes of your time to let us show you the basics. In this tutorial, you will get a very easy to understand, straight-forward explanation of what you need to know to choose a good web host. If you come across any terms in this tutorial that you are unfamiliar with, please visit our glossary and look it up.

........................................................................................................................................

Introduction

Welcome to the Internet Simplicity "Tutorial in Plain English." This tutorial was written to give assistance to people who are looking for a basic understanding of the Internet, and how to get a website online.

This tutorial does not assume you have any prior knowledge of the Internet, Web Hosting, Website Design or anything. (whew!)

If you are a newbie to the Internet, if you don't know the first thing about Websites, or Servers, or if you are just looking for a good starting point to learn more about this area, then you've come to the right place.

We hope that your online ventures will benefit from this information.

..............................................................

Internet Basics

The Building Blocks

To gain a basic understanding the wonderful world of Web Hosting and Web Page Design, you have to understand some basic concepts about the Internet. Consider this material a building block for this whole tutorial. If you already understand this, but just want some tips on choosing a web host, feel free to skip ahead.

Servers

You have probably have heard the term "server" used all the time, and you might have even known that it is a computer that has something to do with the Internet, but what actually is a server, what does it do, and why is it called a "server"?

To illustrate, let's start off with a familiar example. You are in a restaurant, and there are people ordering food, and there are waiters bringing the customers what they ordered. Pretty simple to understand? Well, this is essentially how the Internet works.

Let's say you type in an address to somewhere on the Internet. www.yahoo.com, for example. (Back to the above example, you tell your waiter that you would like Chicken Parmesan). What happens then, is a request is sent to a special computer with Yahoo's information on it, that you would like to see yahoo information. (Your waiter goes to the kitchen and asks the chef for Chicken Parmesan). Then, this special computer with Yahoo data on it responds, and sends you what you wanted to see, and now it is on your computer.(The chef makes the food, and your waiter brings it to your table.)

Now the name "server" can be pretty easily derived from the above example, where your "server" brings you what you requested. Make sense? It is then a pretty obvious conclusion that the person (or computer) who is making the request is called the client.

And so we have this relationship of computers on the Internet: Those who make requests to see data or pictures (the Clients, the person surfing the net), and those computers that store all of that data, and send that data to whoever wants to see it (the Servers). Pretty simple.

Now that we have this understood, let's see how this applies to you and your webpage.

Next: Web Hosting 102