Web Hosting is vital to each and every website in the world but is often neglected or misunderstood. You could spend a small fortune on a website designer or web design company and end up with a beautiful, professional website design, but if it takes 30 seconds or more for the site to load then it’s unlikely that many people will get to see you wonderful website design.
What is hosting?
A web site’s data must be physically stored on a computer (a server) which is connected to the internet, so that it can be accessed by any other computer connected to the internet. The service of storing a website and making it available on the internet is called hosting, and the service provider is called a web host. Your website hosting will decide how quickly it will load and how many people can access it simultaneously, it is essential to use the best host you can.
The variety in web hosting services is as great as the variety of types of websites, website designs, web designers and web design agencies, so it is important that you are aware of the many different types of hosting available and what will suit for your website needs
Most web designers and website design companies will have preferred hosting companies and some will provide hosting as part of their package. While your website design is the process of being developed, your website designer may store your website on their own server for testing. In this case the server may be called a testing, development, or staging server.
When your website design is complete, your website designer will move it to its permanent home. This is referred to as a production server. Your website designer may use these terms so it is useful to know them. For example, once you have approved the work it can then be made ‘live’ by putting it on the production server.
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