What is hosting? Using the same analogy that we used in ‘What is a Domain’, if the internet is the hard drive, and a domain is a folder on that hard drive, then the your hosting is the bit of hard drive space that holds the data for that file. Just like your domain you have to purchase hosting space, so essentially you are buying a little bit of hard drive space on the internet to hold all of your website files. The way this works is that when you purchase hosting, you will purchase it from a hosting provider, and once purchased you will have a dashboard with a variety of different tools and some dedicated servers (nameservers). These nameservers are your hard drive space. So when purchase your domain, you will point it to your nameservers, and once pointed you can then build your website and the data will be saved on your allocated servers that are owned by your hosting provider.
As mentioned above, beyond just getting some allocated servers you will also get an assortment of tools from your hosting provider. The amount of tool you get will depend on your hosting provider and the type of service you buy from them. These tools, typically managed through the ‘C-Panel’, will allow you to manage you servers and the domain(s) on them. This can range from installing SSL certificates, transferring files, installing WordPress, and more. Personally, I am an big fan of SiteGround as they are very affordable, have a lot of support, and include a lot of tools to easily manage all of the sites I have hosted on my servers. However there are a ton of great hosting providers out there, so just find one you like and go with it. During these courses we will be using SiteGround, but you should be able to accomplish everything using someone else. My only advice would be don’t use GoDaddy. While many of your clients will use them and you should know how to navigate their platform, they will always try to up charge you and they are not a great choice for personal use.
