A lot of my website design clients realize that they need a new site, but have no idea how a website works or what’s involved in making it happen… especially hosting. Today I’ll give a quick tutorial on how it all works and give a few tips on selecting the right hosting. It’s Manic Marketing Monday!
The concept of the inter-workings of a website might best be compared with a computer program. Let’s say you purchase some software, you’ll need a few things to be able to use it: a computer to host it, and a person to operate it. A website is nothing more than a program, just like software. It’s a program that operates a digital brochure – that has pictures, information, links, and etc. If you wanted a website just for yourself, all you would need is a computer. But since websites are meant for the web, you’ll need more than that.
Since a website is like a software program – it’ll need a computer to host it, but one that people will be able to find over the internet. First, get a domain. This is like the address to your home, it will point to where your site is hosted, the computer. The type of computer that you’ll need is a server – basically, a computer hooked up to the internet. We call that ‘hosting’ and it’s a service that many companies provide – there are a lot of options out there. Which type of hosting you need is basically determined by what kind of website you have. For instance: if you are selling a product on your website and keeping customers information, you might want to consider a hosting company that offers automatic site backups and restoration – – you’ll pay more, but get more. But if your website is a simple site with information about your business (an online brochure), then you just need basic hosting – something that even offers email accounts. For my business, since I build websites that are founded on WordPress, I offer a hosting that is made for WordPress sites.
Yes, there are a lot of hosting companies out there – and they offer a variety of services for a variety of needs, with a variety of costs! 🙂 I hope this post has helped in the basic understand of how websites work and everything that is involved.
scottJohnson
owner/artist Brown Cow Design
