We often hear this question when talking to someone who’s never had a website before. It’s understandable, the term was new to us once as well. We try to explain it, thinking it’s simple to grasp, but often get nothing more than curious looks at first. It’s not as easy to explain as one might think apparently. This learned fact is the inspiration for this article. Let’s start from the beginning. To understand web hosting, one needs to first understand what a website is.
Part I: What is Website?
A website is nothing more than a collection of web pages. These “pages” are files with an .html extension for example. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) files to be precise. These files are basically just text files, however they contain HTML code. The code is recognized by web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. The code structures the files’ content. Items such as headings, paragraphs, and images, are displayed in a basically organized fashion because of this code.
It’s Dynamic
One piece of HTML code allows for linking. When this code is used in combination with text or an image, that text or image becomes a “clickable” link. Clicking on it will point your browser to a new web page/file. Since a website is a collection of these pages/files, linking them together makes them navigable — meaning you can move via your browser from one page to another, and back if you wish. That makes those loose pages a collective, and if styled the same way, make for a cohesive, navigable website.
Bringing Them Together
Examples of pages/files one might have on a website might include index.html (home page), about.html, contact.html, and others, as needed. Hopefully you get the idea. Once created you can bring them up on your web browser even though they may be on your own computer, and if linked, you can sort of see how the whole thing comes together as a site.
A Real Example
Here’s an example of the HTML code for a proper web page file. It’s very basic and has no added styling, but if you Copy the code below and Paste into Notepad or other plain text program, save it as index.html (not index.html.txt), then point to it with your web browser, you will in fact have a valid web page. To “point to it with your browser,” using Windows Explorer or whatever you use to access your computer’s files, Right-Click on the index.html, for example, and chose to Open it with your browser of choice.
But first let’s create the file. If you want to play along, here’s the code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>My Home Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My New Home Page</h1>
<p>This is an example of content on your home page. This content is shown
in HTML that forms a proper paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph. This one contains a link leading to your
About page: <a href="path-to-file/folder/about.html">About Page Link</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Make other copies of this file, change the content, name the file differently, update links (get path-to-file/folder from your browser’s address bar), and the next thing you know you have a website. We can even show you a live example of the page/code above, plus an About page example — this is essentially a plain Jane (unstyled) two-page mini website.
You can see these pages because they are being hosted on the Internet. Unfortunately the pages on your computer, if you decided to make them, and since they’re not hosted on the Internet, can only be enjoyed by you. And that brings us to part two.
Part II: What’s Being Hosted?
If we haven’t confused you too much you now know a website is a collection of files and that these files contain HTML code understood by web browsers, and content for users. You’ll also know that somehow the code structures the content (to give it meaning and very basic style). You now hopefully also understand that these files or pages can be linked together to make the collection navigable. And you’ll now probably also understand that it is this navigability that makes this collection of files/pages a real website.
The Web Server
As described, these linked pages can be brought up on a browser but only on your computer. Being hosted on the Internet means others can access your web pages too. As such you can use these pages to communicate something to your target visitors. To get those pages where others can see them they must reside on what’s known as a web server. A web server is just a computer like yours for all practical purposes. This computer is tied into the Internet and offers access to certain files. This is done by way of a complex numbering and domain name system. Here’s a previous article on the subject.
The end result is when someone types in http://www.your-doman-name.com/ they end up getting this file: http://www.your-doman-name.com/index.html. And from there they can go to any other pages linked to from the Home page via, as commonly seen on most websites, a “navigation menu.”
Same Thing, New Place
It seems like we should go on-and-on, like there’s more to it or something, but we’ve actually covered the basics. We’ve explained what a website is and you should now understand that the same browser functionality you can enjoy accessing web pages on your computer can be accessible to all if those files are “hosted” on a publicly available web server computer.
The sky’s the limit from this point. We offer our customers web hosting. This means we offer a web server and storage for your files/pages. Storage for your site. We also offer access (ma,e/number) and the bandwidth needed for this electronic transaction between web server, files, and browser to occur.