Easy Step by Step Guide on How to Host a Website
Hosting a website sounded like a super difficult task without an easy to understand guide. Our web design company provides a guide on how to host a website for you in this article.
If you want to start a website for your company or any project, knowing how to host a website is mandatory. There are easy ways to set up a website by using web builder tools like WordPress, but still, that doesn’t include a website hosting service.
Now, in this article, we will guide you through each step of how to host a website. However, before getting to the web hosting steps, we are going to touch briefly on what web hosting is.
What is web hosting?
To put web hosting in the easiest explanation, Website hosting is the process of storing files on a server that will make the files viewable on the WWW. Without website hosting, your website is just a bunch of files like codes and images that cannot display or perform on the internet, no one will be able access or view your website.
There are different types of web hosting services that you can choose from to match your needs and budget. We will touch on some of them later in this article.
How to host a website?
The process of how to host a website is not that easy, but you can accomplish it with helpful guides and helping tools.
Here are the steps of how to host a website, there are four main steps.
- Identify the types of website you need
- Choose and get the website hosting service
- Get the domain for your website
- Transfer your website to the server
We will go into more details of each step to host a website.
1.Identify the types of website you need
The first step of how to host a website is not really about hosting, but it is the important step that will help you make decisions throughout the website hosting process. It is to identify the types of websites you need.
There are two main types of websites which are static websites and dynamic websites.
Static websites
Static websites are, as its name suggests, static websites are fixed. Static websites show content and information on the website just as it was created. Everyone that visits the static websites will see the same thing on the websites. It is mostly used for providing information about brands, products, and any news or updates. Static websites do not have many functions that will interact and change for the users.
If you want to build websites that do not need to interact with the site visitors such as blogging websites, informational websites, or brand’s profiles could be static websites.
Dynamic websites
On the other hand, dynamic websites allow users to interact with the websites more. Dynamic websites refers to the websites that are always changing. It is considered to be more functional. Site users can interact with information that is listed on the website to match their objectives. E-commerce websites that allow you to filter the product choices or make payments are the examples of dynamic websites.
Dynamic websites can be used for any website purpose since it is much more versatile. If you want to interact with the site visitors in any way, dynamic websites are your choice.
Why do we need to choose?
Choosing between static and dynamic will affect the type and plan of web hosting service. It will tell you how much you should invest in a web hosting service. Generally, if you choose to build a static website, you can choose a more affordable hosting since it uses less server resources, but if you choose dynamic websites, you may need a bigger web hosting plan that will cost more.
2.Choose and get the website hosting service
The next step of how to host a website is to choose the web hosting type and plan. You will hire a web hosting service providers to help you with web hosting. Web hosting services will provide you with the server for storage and manage your website files in order to make it work online.
In this part, we will take a look at five main types of web hosting services. We will discuss briefly on how to choose between these hosting services.
- Shared web hosting
Shared web hosting is very popular due to its affordable prices. It is when you share the same physical server with other websites. It is easy to use, you do not need any specific knowledge to use a shared web hosting service. The price of a shared hosting service can be as low as $5 per month.
- Dedicated web hosting
Dedicated web hosting is when you have one physical server for your website. You are not sharing any storage on the server to any other website. It allows you to take full control of your server. You can install softwares that you want and not have to worry about other websites slowing your website down. Also, clearly, you have lots of storage space, so you don’t need to think of limited storage space at all. Dedicated website will cost more that shared hosting, it will cost around $70 to $150 each month.
- VPS web hosting
VPS is Virtual Private Server, it is when you share the physical server that performs as many private servers. You get the privacy sense of a dedicated server while you do not have to pay the price of the whole server. It costs around $10 to $60 monthly. Also, with this hosting type, you need some technical expertise to install and manage VPS hosting.
- Cloud web hosting
Cloud web hosting is cost effective since it uses a pay-per-use pricing method. It offers more storage, makes your website work faster and is able to receive more traffic. For this hosting type, you need some basic knowledge about cloud systems to use this web hosting.
- Managed WordPress hosting
Managed WordPress hosting or usually referred as WordPress hosting service becomes popular since WordPress is now the most used website builder tools around the world. It is very affordable and is easy to use since the hosting service provider will take care of most technical issues for you. However, as its name, you can only use this for WordPress websites only.
When choosing the web hosting type, the first thing you should consider is your budget. It is only to start with the plan that is more affordable and change to a bigger plan or better hosting types as your website grows bigger and gains more popularity and traffic.
Choosing suggestions
If you are a new or small business, you could start with shared web hosting or managed WordPress hosting if you are using WordPress. Then you can upgrade to VPS or Cloud hosting over time. After that, if your company has become more successful and you have more budget to spend on the website, you should go for the dedicated web hosting. Dedicated hosting will be worth spending a budget on if your website gains a lot of traffic and grows bigger and bigger as time goes by.
Check out more types of web hosting and more details about each type of hosting to learn about their pros and cons.
3.Get the domain for your website
Now that you have the web hosting service, one more thing you need is the domain name for your website. The domain name is basically the name of your website. It is what will appear on the URLs. The domain name is needed for accessing your website.
Web hosting service providers often offer domain names as a bundle with web hosting service. However, you can purchase domain names separately as well.
4.Transfer your website to the server
Now, the last step of how to host a website is to put your website on the server.
Before this step, you will need to create your website whether coding them yourself or use the help of WordPress themes.
When you have your website builded, you can just transfer the files from your device to the web server. The process is just like moving or copying files on your computer. The hosting service provider will normally provide guidelines for you to follow in order to transfer your website files onto the server.
Final thoughts
These are all the important steps of how to host a website. You can see that it is not easy, but it is not too difficult with our guide. However, this is not the end of the web hosting and managing process. You still need to take care of and make sure the website performs well and always keeps it updated.