“This is because without a web hosting, there’ll be no medium to host your web files for other users to “call” your website to their browser.”

Introduction to Web Hosting

The most common hosting service to enable anyone to start building a website is web hosting services (which is also usually referred as shared hosting). This allows users to upload web files into a hosting space and allow anyone to “call” the website from the shared hosting server. This web hosting service generally requires a domain name “example.com” for other users to type in the browser address bar, and call the appropriate web files and then allow them to surf the content. Take an example, if you type facebook.com in your web browser, you will get Facebook content in your browser.

Most users confuse that, why do I need a domain name, or why do I need a web hosting when I already purchased a domain name?

• This is because without a web hosting, there’ll be no medium to host your web files for other users to “call” your website to their browser
• And without a domain name, other users do not have a proper address to type in their browser to “call” your website.

Let us put everything in layman terms for an easier understanding. The easiest scenario that matches web hosting and domain name, will be you are a tenant who rented a shop lot in a shopping complex.

Let’s break it down:

As a shopping complex owner, we provide tenants “electricity, environment, centralized air-conditioner, facilities, security and other services” (which translate to server hardware, data center, bandwidth, disk space, security of the shopping complex and etc). Tenants can rent a shop lot to run their own business – everything outside of the shoplot is run by the shopping complex owner. Tenants are responsible to decorate their own shop lot and put the content accordingly.

A shopper, to get to your shoplot, will need to search for your shop name, and then look up in the directory and the directory will give them the correct address to go to your shop. Then, once they enter your shoplot, they can start to browse the products/services you offered in the shoplot – in which users to type in your domain name in their browser, and the domain name linked to a nameserver will be redirected according to the DNS zone provided – then they will be able to navigate to your web hosting and call the content of your website.

Both web hosting and domain name are yearly recurring services – same as shoplot, if you wish to continue to rent – then you have to pay to the respective provider.

Web hosting separated into 2 types: Linux (Typically cPanel & Directadmin) and Windows (Plesk)

The recommended web hosting for the average users is to use linux web hosting as the interface is easier and more user friendly – While Windows is when your web application requires .NET support.

Web hosting is the lowest cost any users can subscribe to kick-start a small website (the cost is approximately RM 250 – 800 yearly) depending on the package. To sum it up:

• Longest contract length will get the lowest possible price
• Shared web hosting is known as the economical & budget-friendly web hosting service

Usually, most hosting providers provide web hosting service with a free domain name (Top Level Domain) together.

A top level domain (TLD) is domain with no country code bind to it, for example, .com, .net, .org (which is the most common and it can be registered by anyone as long as you pay for the domain registration fee which typically cost in between RM 50 – 80 yearly)

A country level domain name (cTLD), is domain name with country code, for example, .com.my, .my, .sg, .jp, .com.jp and etc – and this usually requires you to either have a business in that particular country or you are a residence in that country to register them (The cost varies a lot depends on country, for example, .com.my costs about RM 80.00 yearly).

The maximum renewal for both TLD domains and cTLD domains are usually 5 years only.

Some popular domain names such as hotels.com, can go up to USD 15,000 to buy out – and fun fact, the shorter the domain name, the harder and the higher price you need to pay to buy them!

Build your own website today by signing up for a domain and buy a web hosting with TheGigabit. If you have any questions regarding this, please do not hesitate to engage our sales to get more information: [email protected].