Do you find this question silly? Well, ever since I've started selling web hosting services (http://www.byteswebhosting.com), I've discovered that a majority of people think that once you've designed a website, everybody should be able to see it and it should come in the search engines. When I tell them that in order to show their "web pages to the world in general they have to host the pages on a publicly accessible server, there is a long drawn out blank.
Web hosting is a service that allows users to post Web pages to the Internet. A web host, or hosting service, is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for websites to be viewed on the web.
To understand web hosting properly, we need to understand what actually the Internet is. The Internet is a network of millions of interconnected computers. In computer terminology, when many computers are connected by a cable or something to work together as a single system, it becomes a network. It can be a LAN (local area network) or WAN (wide area network). So if there are A, B, C, , X, Y, Z computers connected to the network, then the person sitting at computer A can access computer P (according to the access granted to that person by the almighty systems administrator) and P can access A and so on. In this way, people can share resources such as software, printers, etc.
Now, A can only access P and P can only access T if all of them are connected to the network. M can read a document stored in S only if M and S belong to the network.
But, how does A know that it is accessing P and not K? Every computer in the network is assigned a unique number and the computer is accessed using that number. It is like an address.
Seeing things in a macro perspective, same thing happens with the Internet. It started with a tiny network of computers to share data among research organizations. As more and more computers got connected to the network and as more and more computers got connected to those computers connected to the network, the Internet began to take shape.
It was not possible to connect individual computers from all over the world. So in came the ISPs like AOL to whom you could connect. In turn they would connect to other ISPs and information gateways, and so on. So if you're connected to your local ISP, then your local ISP is connected to some bigger network and so you are connected to that bigger network too. And hence, this is how the Internet is a big network of interconnected computers.
After reading all this, you might say, "All the more reason for me to believe that if I've created the web pages on my computer, everybody should be able to see them.
Well, to have a website on the Internet you first need to have a web server that is connected to the Internet 24x7. Unfortunately, managing a web server can be very costly and needs technical knowledge that most businesses do not have. This is where "Web hosts" come in. Web hosts provide the equipment and other technical resources that are needed to provide you a customized web site.
Web hosting services are more advantageous because they are outsourced, meaning that the physical location of the Web server does not reside at the consumer's premises. Outsourcing your Web presence effectively transfers the responsibility for maintaining your Web site infrastructure from yourself to an organization that is more competent to do so.
You can take advantage of a web host in order to free yourself from pre-occupying your scarce human and financial resources on web host issues. Individuals and companies who outsource their Web presence do so in order to achieve the following objectives: reduce and control operating costs; improve their own company focus; gain access to in-depth expertise; free internal resources for core competencies; and obtain access to world-class capabilities to control IT functions which are difficult to manage.
So, the next time you think of having a website, keep in mind that a hosting service is a quintessential part of your plan of things to come.
Amrit Hallan is a freelance web designer. For all web site development and web promotion needs, you can get in touch with him at http://www.bytesworth.com. For more such articles, visit http://www.bytesworth.com/articles and http://www.bytesworth.com/learn You can subscribe to his newsletter [BYTESWORTH REACHOUT] on Web Designing Tips & Tricks by sending a blank email at bytesworth-subscribe@topica.com
