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Web hosting is the essentially the placement of
your website onto the Internet through a server. Once your site is
on a server, anyone with Internet access can look at your website -
from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. In order to have your
site hosted on the web, you need to have the following three things:
- A website - a page or set of pages that is located under the
same domain name. MadeInPerth.com is a website (but you knew that
already!) A web page is a computer document written in a
publishing language called HTML. When an Internet user types in
your web address, your web server sends the content of your web
page to that user.
- A domain name - a unique text-based address used to locate a
specific set of web pages. A domain name is made up of words
and/or numbers plus a TLD (top level domain). The TLD for most
businesses is ".com", such as www.MadeInPerth.com; non-profit
organizations use ".org"; universities and educational sites use
".edu"; and sites involved with the U.S. government use ".gov".
More TLDs are on the way, such as .biz, .pro, .name, .info, etc.
- An account with a web hosting company, or a server of your own
to host your website
Web hosting is, in many ways, similar to renting property. There are
plenty of companies that will rent you space on their web servers.
The wide range of services start from free hosting on up to buying a
server for your own personal use. It's possible to spend thousands
of dollars a year on web hosting alone, though the average person or
small business typically pays $10 - $40 a month, depending on how
many features they need.
We have provided the information in this lesson to serve as a
guideline to help you find the right home for your web site.
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