What is domain and hosting

Whenever you get a site visitor, he/she would use your domain name to reach to your website again. When a site visitor enters your domain name into the browser,

this domain would then be translated into your server’s IP address, from here your server would forward the user to your site files, that the user’s browser would show as a typical web-page.
So basically domain name and web hosting are the two tools that make up the overall existence of your website.

What is Domain

The computers communicate and contact with each other using numbers known as the IP addresses that are much like you use a phone number to dial a person’s phone. The domain names on the internet are just likethe entries in a phone book. This phone book tells people who are searching for a business of what the entries exist, similar to a domain which tells people (their computers) about a specific domain that is hosted on the server. If you will not have a domain, your site would be located at a temporary URL instead of having a permanent domain name that would make your site look unprofessional and impractical.

Your domain name is actually the name of your site or the URL that helps the visitor find your presence on the internet(for example,www.mynewcompany.com). Domain can be purchased by approaching a domain name registrar. Its price usually ranges from $10 to $50 per year depending upon the extensions that are being given.

When you have purchased your domain name, the domain name registrar will provide you with login details to help you access your account. This info is important to be kept at hand and should be passed on to your web developer.

What is hosting

While setting up your first website , it is very common that you may get confused between the domain name registration and web hosting.Hosting is more like the space that you would rent out to get your business settled in. Remember that it’s just the space itself and does not include furnishings such as shelves for your products, so the web hosting account would not include a site that will allow you to sell your products.

As mentioned above,hosting generally refers to the web server that stores lots of data files and a web hosting provider rents out web servers and network connections to the end users or even to the resellers. In most cases, hosting providers are the parties who are handling server maintenance work including their backup, maintenance,root configuration, disaster recoveries etc. but in some situations, the end users may need to get everything managed by themselves.

In the web hosting world, you can easily furnish the space that is provided by your host by installing the framework applications within your c-Panel. In the absence of the hosting services, it will not be possible for you to have a place for your files to reside so your domain may eventually become like a disconnected phone number of the phone directory with your site files having no place to stay.

In order for your website to appear on the Internet, the files need to be uploaded to a server and the process of uploading your website on the server is ‘hosted’ by a hosting company. The hosting is normally billed on monthly or annually at the rate of $10 to $50 per month based on the type of server required and the space and bandwidth used by the end user.

The domain names can be purchased anywhere, however it is much convenient to buy domain and set up its hosting from the same location.