What is Web Hosting?
When you reduce a website down to it’s essence, it’s just a set of digital files crafted by smarty-pants coders and designers.
Digital files need stored somewhere. You probably store your files on your computer’s hard drive, a thumb drive, DVDs, or in the cloud on a service like Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive.
Website files are no different.
Your website needs a home. But unlike personal documents you can store pretty much anywhere, your website can only live in a home that meets it’s special needs. That home is a web host.
A Web Host is Your Website’s Home on the Web
A web host is a special-purpose computer that’s accessible via the Internet and runs special software required to serve your website to visitors.
Generally speaking you can’t host your own website on your own computer. It’s complicated and expensive. If being a “homeowner” on the Internet isn’t a reasonable option, then where should your website live?
Web Hosting: An Apartment for your Website
You’ll use a service called web hosting. Web hosting is a service in which you pay a regular fee for use of someone else’s web server. Consider web hosting fees the rent you pay for your website’s home on the Internet.