A website is well suited to spread your ideas or to draw attention to services and products. But, of course, this only works if interested parties can reach the website. Web hosting ensures that visitors can access what you’ve put online at any time via the Internet.
How does web hosting work?
Simply put, web hosting works by connecting the domain name of the client to the server of the hosting provider. The domain name system (DNS) is used for this purpose. After the domain name is registered and the data has been set up on the hosting account, both must be linked to make the website accessible to visitors.
Nameservers of the web hosting providers are used by browsers to know under which IP address a certain domain can be found. If the domain name is called via the browser of a user, it sends a request through the Internet and receives the corresponding IP address under which the website is found. Most web hosts use several different nameservers. This ensures that correct domain name resolution will continue to work even if the hardware fails.
Therefore, at least two different nameservers should be used for each domain. After the domain has been set up on the host’s name servers, and these have been added in the registry to the domain, the propagation usually works within 24 hours, and visitors are directed to the correct web hosting when calling the domain name.
How is web hosting set up?
In order to successfully set up websites on a web hosting account and make them available on the Internet, the following steps must be taken:
1. Select a web hosting package
Web hosting providers provide their customers with a wide selection of different plans. Depending on the required performance and functional scope, the offer ranges from inexpensive webspace packages for beginners to high-performance server systems for professional users.
2. Registration of the domain name
The desired domain name can be ordered from the same provider, which also offers the web space, as well as from another provider. In most web hosting plans, a certain number of domain names are already included, so there are often no additional costs.
3. Link the domain to the web hosting
As already explained in the upper section, the selected domain name must be linked to the web hosting account via DNS. If domain and web hosting are provided by the same provider, the setup is done automatically. As a customer, you do not have to take any steps in this case. Otherwise, the DNS entries must be changed in your control panel.
4. Creation of the website
The last step is to create your own website. For this purpose, either pre-prepared files can be uploaded to your hosting account or you can use a content management system such as WordPress. This is then used to populate your website with content such as texts, pictures or videos.