A Client’s Guide to Hosting
Posted by: nGen Works on Wednesday October 31, 2007
This guide is for clients to help clear the muddy waters of web hosting. I understand the world of hosting with all it’s domain names, urls, web hosts and servers can be confusing. Let’s look at how a website is set up and what the component parts are.
Domain
Most websites begin with registering a Domain. Also known as a “web address” or “URL”, the domain is the thing that comes after the www along with the .com, .net or .org. For instance the full nGen Works domain is http://www.ngenworks.com.
Registrar
In order to buy or register a domain, you must use a registrar. This is a company that
- checks to see if the domain is available and
- secures this domain for you to use when you’re ready buy the name
You can use any number of registrars to secure your domain: Register.com, GoDaddy.com and NetworkSolutions.com are among the most popular.
Tip: When registering a domain, select a single registrar and purchase all your domains through them. This will allow you to store and manage all your domains in the same place. Avoid registering domains with different providers because you’ll end up with a password management nightmare.
Web Host / Web Server
You’ve purchased your domain name, now it’s time to find a web host. A web host is a company that provides space, a web server, for your website files and email to live. When someone types in your domain name, using a web browser like Firefox or Safari, the web browser sends a message, or request, to the web server for a particular page of your site. The web server receives the message and responds to the browser with the requested page.
Note: At nGen Works we provide hosting to our clients as an additional service that can be purchased on a yearly basis. We use a company called Rackspace, you can read why here.
Website
Now that you have your domain registered and your web host selected it’s time to build the actual website. The website is the collection of files, images, video, etc. that combine to create the finished product. Your web development company will create and test this collection of files and when complete, they will move the files to web host using a method called FTP or file transfer protocol.
FTP
FTP is software that allows you to move files from one computer to another. Once the final files have been FTPed to the web host, your website is pretty much ready to go.
DNS
The last thing that needs to be done prior to a website going live is to tell the Internet where people should be directed when they type in your domain name. This is done through DNS, or a domain name server. DNS settings are usually managed through your Registrar by entering two addresses that look like this: ns1.rackspace.com.
Let’s just say DNS is the phonebook of the Internet. When you type a domain name and press enter, your browser asks the Internet “what web server should I go to?”. DNS routes you to the correct server so you can retrieve the website you requested.
Wrap up
There are a few more technical things that go on behind the scenes, like MX records for your mail and SSL for security, but we can address those in another post.
Filed under: Interweb, Resources
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