By Shakeel Rashid, Technical Services Engineer of Supreme Systems. For more information on our products and services please call me on 0845 009 5430 or alternatively email me on shakeel.rashid@supremesystems.co.uk.
What is Domain & Web Hosting?
This is the process of providing companies and individuals the service of hosting their website(s) on a server which everyone has access to over the internet.
How it Works
At the Supreme Systems offices, there is a server which hosts the company’s website. Its address is www.supremesystems.co.uk. When a user types that address in the web browser (for example Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox), the user will be redirected to the company’s server. How does the server know that you want to view the website and not access files? That is easy; this is done through what is called ports. Imagine this scenario. You are at a bank and there are several queues....one for each service, such as mortgages, paying in, credit cards and advice. You simply get into the right queue. Your web browser knows that you want to view a website so it automatically puts the following into the address:
www.supremesystems.co.uk:80
That colon 80 (:80) says that you want to view a website so you enter the correct door. Other services such as FTP use port 21, but you would normally use FTP software for it so you wouldn’t have to type that port number in. Every service has its own port number and port numbers start at the number 0 up to 65,535.
Who are the users of this service?
Anyone who wants their website hosted but cannot afford to buy a server and a public IP address can easily pay a company to host their website for them for a fraction of the price. The main bulk of users for this service are SME’s with relatively small websites. However, a lot of the general public who are members of clubs or communities put their information up on a website which is usually hosted on an IT service provider’s server.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Domain & Web Hosting
The only disadvantage that can be possible with this is the fact that if you are going to upload a website yourself and you’re not in the IT field then you will have BIG problems in trying to upload it and configure it so that potential viewers of the site can navigate to it. On the other hand, if you get an IT company to do everything for you, then within a couple of minutes you can have your website uploaded and ready to use.
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