What is hosting

• What is hosting?
• What is domain name?
• What am I?
• What am I doing???

All very good questions are these. There is one obvious answer, yes. But this answer is wrong for obvious reasons.  You may also notice that this makes little to no sense so far, and this is a valid and correct observation. I’m about to turn that all around.

Hosting is, for the purposes of a website, the place wherein the files and software reside which make up your website. So in essence a webhost is someone else’s computer storage that you need to borrow so other people can access your website easily. You can either borrow for free or pay for hosting your files with a webhost. I like to use the term ‘host’ in place of ‘webhost’ just because it’s easier to type, and I’m lazy. I understand that ‘host’ can mean various things depending on context:

So I’ll just assume that you know what I’m talking about from now on.

A domain name complements a hosting service by allowing a lovely human readable line of text to represent the IP address of the place where your files are kept which would otherwise be not very human friendly. The relationship between IP address and domain name is much the same as a phone number would be to a name in your phone book, except that practically everyone in the world can use your unique domain name to access your unique website. Unfortunately it’s very difficult and a little bit costly to set up your own hosting from your own computer or old desktop you’re currently not using for anything else, despite the fact you may have a great internet connection.