How To Host A Website (Learn in 5 Mins)
Businesses, freelancers, or people who are interested to build a portfolio or anyone are all moving online. The world is moving to an era where all of the things we need are found on the internet.
If a business hasn’t already made its way online, it would probably affect his brand, and so it needs to start building its presence.
One way businesses can build their presence online is by making their website. Businesses that have their website give people the assurance that they are real, and they are not fraud or a scam. But building a website sounds scary.
With all the things to do and the technical aspects of it, it looks like you’re solving a difficult math problem.
Some parts of building your website may seem easy when you get your hands on it, but most people who want to build their websites starts to freak out with the word web hosting.
Web hosting is one part of building your website, and it’s something you shouldn’t skip or miss out on.
Quick read – 10 Best Cloud Hosting for Startups
What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting simply allows the internet to broadcast a website’s content. The web host is where you put your website’s content or files. Hence, it is known as the server. The server helps you be seen on the internet.
When a person searches you online, the server will direct your website to them.
Now that you know what is web hosting or a web host, you can now proceed on how you can host your website.
There are two ways you can host your site. You can use a website platform, or you can host locally.
Whichever way you choose to do this depends on your preference, but here’s an overview of what web hosting on your own or renting a space online looks like.
Web Hosting Using a Provider
Choose a hosting platform
There are thousands of web hosting companies you need to choose from to host your website. Choosing the best sounds intimidating, hence, thorough research must be done.
When it comes to choosing a hosting provider, Adam Berry, the digital director at Wingard Creative, said there are three things to consider, Speed, support, and security. Take note of these when trying to choose the right web host for your site.
To elaborate it further, here are what you should consider when choosing the best web hosting platform for your business.
- Uptime: You must guarantee that your web host can provide a 24/7 uptime. Make sure that it gives you a 99.5% uptime. This is to be certain that your website will be running constantly. If your web host cannot provide this, anytime your customers drop in your website or shop, they’ll expect a blank page, which will lead to an increase in bounce back rate. This could affect your SEO and Google ranking.
- Bandwidth: You must determine how much bandwidth you need for your website. If you’ll be using large files you need a larger bandwidth to avoid crashing or slowing down of your website.
- SSL Certificates: SSL certificate is important to secure data or information of your customers or visitors. When choosing a web host, make sure it provides an SSL certificate. Some offer it for free on their plans.
- Scalability: The web host you choose must have the ability to be scalable. This means that when you plan to upgrade your plan, it allows you to so.
- Backups: In case your website has been hacked or something goes wrong, you must be sure that your web host has the ability to back up the content of your website.
- Cost: Finding the cheapest or the most expensive web host doesn’t guarantee a better website. When choosing, check what best fits your budget and your website’s need.
- Customer Service Support: Look for a hosting site that has a 24/7 customer service.
- Email Support or service: It is best to look for a hosting site that allows you to create an email address for your website. Most include this feature in their package.
- Control Panel option: · If your web host has a control panel, this suggests that you can easily manage your page. You can tick some parts of your site like email setting, your database, and others. If there is no control panel, you have to manage most of the technical aspects of your website.
It’s time to check on some hosting platforms like BlueHost, Godaddy, Dynadot, or more. Choose the best plan and features that will help you and your business grow.
Choose a Web Hosting Plan
When you have chosen what platform will host your website, it’s time to further choose a plan that best suits the type of website you are building.
Here are the hosting plans you have to take into consideration:
- Shared Web hosting: Coming from the name itself, shared web hosting means one server is used by multiple sites. This plan is best for start-ups or first-timers, but since it’s a shared space, it only allows sites with low traffic to use it. This plan has an affordable tag price.
- Cloud Hosting: This is the opposite of shared web hosting. In cloud hosting, instead of having one server, there are multiple servers that work together and form the “cloud.” The benefit of this hosting plan is that, when one server fails, there are others that can back up your site. Hence, you’ll not have a problem when a large amount of traffic enters your site.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS): This hosting plan is a combination of shared web and dedicated servers. Space is shared with multiple sites, but it’s not that many as compared to shared hosting. Since VPS is a combination of shared and dedicated web, a part of the server is also yours.
- Dedicated Hosting: This plan gives you all the right to own your server. Using dedicated hosting, you can control the style of your website, and you don’t share it with anyone, making the performance of your site excellent. However, this plan is expensive, and you have to handle the technical aspect of it.
Buy a Domain
We are now down to the last step on how to host your website.
Buy a domain for your website. You need to have a domain name because people will need it to find you. Your domain name is your internet address.
There are two ways to get your domain name. You could either buy it on a separate company or purchase it as a bundle with the hosting site.
The advantage of buying a domain name separately means you’ll be able to use your domain name even if you choose to change your web host. Meanwhile, purchasing a domain name with the web host could save you money.
Now that you know what is a web host, why you need it, and how to use it to build your website it’s time to start one now.
Web Hosting Using on Your Own
But some are brave enough to host their own site.
This sounds great because it’s free, but hosting your site requires skills and constant maintenance.
However, if you want to just know about it or try it, here are some few steps on how to host your own site.
There are two ways how to host your website:
- Use a Windows PC
- Use a Linux Machine
Using a Windows PC
When using your PC to host your website, you must turn it into a server. To turn your Windows PC into a server, download a software such as WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) to turn or act as a server for your website.
After downloading and installing the software, you now need to add a site and make it public. When self-hosting your website, this doesn’t appear public unless you allow it.
Using a Linux Machine
Using a Linux machine to host your website is similar to using your Windows PC. The only difference is the software installed.
For a Linux machine, you have to download the LAMP software. The process is similar, after adding the software and adding files to the directory, it is then time to make your website public.
Hosting your own website sounds fun, but it’s a technical and difficult approach. Here are some disadvantages of hosting your own website.
- Hosting your own website requires a continuous power supply or backup when a power outage occurs. If the power supply has been cut off, your website will be unavailable on the internet.
- You have to be knowledgeable about the technical aspect of setting up a software on your computer.
- Your internet provider must allow you to run your website. Some internet service’s bandwidth is not enough to allow you to host your website, making it slow and not good for your customers or readers.
- Your computer must be on all the time. Like your power supply that has to be continuous, so is your computer. If there is any interruption on both, your website would be unavailable online.
- Constant maintenance of your hardware to avoid any crashing or interruption.
If you are certain that you can avoid all the disadvantages mentioned above, then perhaps, hosting your own web is for you.
However, if you are new to this and have no means to host your site, it’s always best to use a third-party to help you with your website.
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