What is Hosting
(Web Hosting or Email Hosting or Domain Hosting)?
Web hosting is a service that allows you to make your websites accessible on the web. The host provider, has physical servers where they allocate space for your website files to be stored, and make those files accessible on the Web.
Every Website is hosted on a server.
When users want to view your website, all they need to do is type your domain into their browser. The computer they are using will then connect to the server where your website is hosted and the webpages will be delivered to them through the browser.
Each Website has an address
Each website has a domain name (www.afriitech.co.za) that functions as address of the website.
When you buy a hosting plan, you are actually renting a space on a physical server to store all your website’s files. People can access your website files or data on the internet or web.
Easy way of understanding hosting
When you want to start a business in the real world, you need a physical location. The same thing applies in the digital world when setting up a website.
When you set up an online business, you have files that make up the website. These files take up space, and need a place to live. Without an online home, your files would just sit on your computer, and no one would ever see them.
A hosting provider will provide a place on their server to store all of your files. The hosting provider will be responsible for delivering the files of your website as soon as a browser makes a request by typing in your domain name.
What is domain?
A domain is the address of your website on the internet, such as www.afriitech.co.za. It is used to identify and locate your website and is unique to each website. A domain name is purchased from a registrar and typically includes a top-level domain (TLD) such as .co.za, .com, .org, or .net, as well as a second-level domain (SLD) such as the name of the company or organization.