Website Hosting - A technical overview
The website hosting industry has evolved over time much like other computer related industries. It has become diverse and complex in order to suit the needs of the wide range of businesses that wish to purchase website hosting. In this article we will give you an overview of the technical aspects of website hosting so you will have a better understanding of the nuts & bolts of what goes on when you decide to have your website hosted.
When you order web hosting your web host will instruct you to upload your web site in various ways. Once your web site is uploaded to your web hosts servers it will be available to the world using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The HTTP protocol is a standard way of transferring Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) compatible files to a web browser. When your web browser connects to a website hosting service the file is downloaded to your browser and is presented as web page just like the one you are reading now. The files are on the website hosting company's computers and is transferred to you from their hard drive, through the Internet, and finally to your web browser.
There is sometimes a middle layer between a web server and the website hosting company's disk drive that takes data that is sent to the web browser and manipulates it to make it presentable in standard HTML. If you would like you can read more about web hosting company technologies in order to better understand this layer.
In addition to the serving of pages there are other technologies such as databases, email servers, etc that website hosting companies can provide to you in order to extend your website to do things that plain HTML cannot do by itself. Once you start your own website you will begin to learn that these technologies can considerably speed up the time it takes for you to get data to your customers in the most efficient way.
We hope that this article has given you a better understanding of what is going on behind the scenes with your website. If you are new to web hosting then let us help you find a website hosting company that is right for you.
