Hosting and Domain meaning
Domain names and web hosting services are essential elements of a website. In essence, a domain name serves as a site’s address, while a hosting service provides space and resources to get the website up and running.
Since both elements work hand-in-hand, it’s crucial to understand the differences between them before creating a website.
A domain name refers to the URL people type in a web browser’s address bar to access your site. In other words, domain names offer a convenient way for people to access websites.
Without it, they would have to use a numerical label assigned to every website and server on the internet, also known as an IP address.
Generally, domain names are comprised of two main parts — a second-level domain (SLD) and a top-level domain (TLD). Second-level domains usually consist of words or phrases, while top-level domains are the predetermined extensions that follow.
For example, in the case of google.com, the second-level domain is google, and .com is the TLD.
To get a domain name for your website, you need to register it first. Domain registration is the process of reserving a name on the internet for a certain period. Usually, you need to renew the license once per year, but you can pay up in advance for up to 10 years for the domain to be registered under your name.
Companies or organizations that sell and manage domain name registrations are called domain registrars. Domain registrars are listed under ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an authority that coordinates and manages domain databases on the internet.
However, before moving on to domain registration with a domain registrar, it is essential to check your custom domain’s availability. At Hostinger, we offer a domain checker to help you out.
A domain checker will show the availability of your chosen domain and various domain extensions, along with their prices. If the domain is taken, the domain checker will offer several alternatives.
What Hosting means?
When you want to start a business in the real world, you need a physical location to set up, store, and sell your products. The same rules apply in the digital world when setting up a website.
When you set up an online business, you have a series of files, images, and HTML code that make up your website. These files take up space and need a place to live. Without an online home, your files would just sit on your computer and no one would ever see them. A hosting provider will provide a place on a web server to store all of your files and are responsible for delivering the files of your website as soon as a browser makes a request by typing in your domain name.
When you pay for hosting services, you are simply renting storage space on the internet — just like you would rent a physical store for your business.
What is a Domain Name?
Before we go into more depth, let’s talk about domain names. When you first thought about starting an online business, you purchased a domain name. A domain name is your company’s address on the internet.
Think of it this way: if you are renting space at a physical location for your business, you give customers your street address so they can find you. If you are renting space on the internet, you give customers your domain name.
Whenever someone types in your domain name, it is converted into an IP address. The hosting company then locates all the files connected to your IP address and returns all of the pictures, videos, and words that make up your website.
Just like every street address is unique, so is every domain name. Whenever you start a new website, you get the opportunity to choose a name that perfectly reflects your brand.
Which hosting is best for blog?
Because of Bluehost’s ease of use and its 1-click WordPress installation, we consider it the best web hosting for small business owners and beginners.
Apart from all that, Bluehost also has excellent 24/7 customer support and a great support team that’s fast and friendly. They also give you a free website migration if you’re switching from another web hosting company.
Blog Tyrant has partnered up with Bluehost to give our readers an exclusive discount of 60% with a free domain name and SSL Certificate.
2. HostGator
One of the reasons that HostGator is so popular is because of their reliable performance. Their uptime over the period of 6 months has been recorded as 99.97% and their load time was recorded at an average of 479ms.
Because of its easy-to-use features and 1-click WordPress installation, it’s one of the best web hosting companies for WordPress users.
HostGator has good customer support and they also include a free SSL certificate with their package so you can keep your site secure.
3. SiteGround
SiteGround has a lot of features to compensate for their marginally higher price. They offer free SSL certificates, email accounts, daily backups, free WordPress installation, free site migration, and 24/7 top class customer support.
SiteGround also has a phenomenal uptime of 99.98% which puts it in the top three.
SiteGround is an excellent blog host and for all the right reasons. From their performance to their features, everything is top notch. The only thing that might sway away the users is the lack of 1-click WordPress installation. Still, you can follow our easy WordPress installation guide to get started. Besides that, SiteGround is a solid web host and worth the look.
4. Hostinger
Hostinger costs only $1.59/month if you pay for 48 months. They offer a ton of features including a free domain, caching, free SSL, plus a 30-day money back guarantee.
If you are looking for reliable cheap web hosting service, then you don’t have to look any further than Hostinger.
5. DreamHost
DreamHost’s average load time speed came in at 719ms and their uptime was 99.5%, which is decent but didn’t make our top 3.
You can get a special discount if you go through the link above. The monthly price after the discount starts at $2.95/month with all the features they have to offer.
If you aren’t satisfied with their service, you can always ask for your money back as they give a 97-days money back guarantee.6
6. Cloudways
Cloudways is one of the biggest names in managed WordPress hosting and a solid choice if you want to invest in the best, and not worry about the technical details. They offer reliable service and super-fast speeds, and their expert customer support team, available 24/7/365, is fast and helpful.
Cloudways offers a no credit card free trial so you can try them out at no risk whatsoever.
7. GoDaddy
GoDaddy’s average uptime is 99.97% which is quite reliable, and their load time averages at 500ms.
GoDaddy is a good web hosting for bloggers because of the features they offer. You get a free domain, daily backups and automatic updates.
GoDaddy’s customer support is available 24/7 via phone, live chat, or email.
8. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is great for bloggers who prioritize fast loading times. They also include a free SSL certificate, unlimited storage, and free site migration services.
A2 Hosting’s 24/7 support is fast and very efficient. They provide support through live chat, email, phone and ticketing systems.
What’s incredible about A2 is their “anytime” money back guarantee. If you ever want to cancel, they’ll give you a refund.
9. GreenGeek
GreenGeek’s uptime is 99.94% and their average load time was 515ms which is very good.
GreenGeeks’ support is fast and are available 24/7 via live chat and email. If you run into any problem you will get a quick reply. They also offer phone support which is available from 9am EST to midnight.
The pricing plan starts from $3.95 per month with features like free data transfer, free domain and site migration.
Where hosting Domain?
When selecting a provider it is important to consider the different types of hosting services that are offered. Here are a few things to consider when determining where you would like to host your site.
- What type of website are you building? eCommerce, blog, portfolio, etc.
- Based on the type website, what is the bandwidth needed to run your site
- Can you create email addresses for your domain?
- What type of hosting options are available?
- Do they provide SSL Certificates?
After choosing a hosting provider, completing your domain registration is easy! Often times your web host can also be your domain registrar.
Types of Web Hosting
If you are looking to host a website for your small business, Bluehost is a web hosting provider that offers a variety of hosting services to suit your needs. Once you have chosen your provider, you will need to create a hosting account and determine what type of hosting will work best for your site.
Where is hosting server located?
Every byte present on the internet today is physically on a machine somewhere around the world. This machine with this specific piece of information is sharing it with anyone using the world wide web.
But the most important thing you need to know is the location of the hosting server as that plays a vital role in the quality of its distribution.
Lot of entrepreneurs, while setting up their online businesses, ask why they should invest more for hosting servers outside of their borders when the same services are available to them in their very backyard?
But, young businesses fail to grasp the many factors that come into play for server location.
Some are:
Location of the hosting server matters for SEO
To improve SEO rankings for your website, you must host it in the same location as your target audience. This is one of the most important tips given by online professionals.
An experiment conducted by Richard Baxter, the founder of Builtvisible.com, shows that when he changed the hosting server of his company from the UK to the US, Searchmetric revealed a significant and immediate drop in SEO rankings in the UK. At the same time, SEO rankings had improved significantly in the US.
In this article, Baxter noted, “Back in February I contacted WPengine to ask if we could upgrade to PHP 5.5. With WPengine (and the way we’ve set up our DNS) this upgrade involved an IP address change in Builtvisible.com’s a-records.
“Following this change, I saw a drop in SEO visibility in our UK rankings so, I investigated. Sure enough, Searchmetrics showed a drop in UK rankings, but curiously, the US data appeared to show a big improvement. It became quickly obvious that the IP change was to blame, a location lookup revealed the problem.
“I’d originally set up our hosting to serve from a UK data center, but when we updated the IP address, I failed to check the new host location. The new IP was in the USA.”
Vasilis Vryniotis of Webseoanalytics.com also agrees that Google and other major search engines use the physical location of a server as a signal, which may have a positive or negative impact on SEO rankings.
Google has said that server location is not so important, and even irrelevant often.
The farther the location of your server, the slower your website
It is very important for your website to load fast . In fact, several studies reveal that almost 50% of the internet users expect websites to load within 2 seconds. First time visitors are likely to abandon websites that take over 3 seconds to load.
If you think about it from the user’s perspective, you will understand why 80% of people decide not to come back to a website they have had a bad experience with.
An experiment conducted by Google in 2006 confirmed this. They increased their search results from 10 to 30, and as a result both traffic and revenue dropped by a whopping 20% because the page loaded half a second slower.
The thing is, the world offers many choices to people — especially when they put cash on the table. By allowing our websites to lag in performance, we are giving potential customers a chance to walk away.
Here’s another way to express it. An ecommerce website that makes $100,000 per day will lose 2.5 million dollars in sales due to a one second delay in loading time.
Are these numbers big enough to convince you to have a fast-loading website?
If so, then you need to host it on servers geographically close to your target audience. When you do that, you are decreasing the number of loops the information passes through reaching readers much faster.
Let’s take Buzzfeed as an example. Their servers are so huge that a link on Buzzfeed might crash a new website whose servers are not ready to take the load.
Now with several readers as high as that, think what will happen if Buzzfeed’s servers were far from their target readers. That would increase their downtime and slow their speeds, making them lose their readers by the thousands quickly.
Hosting without wordpress:-
Here at DreamHost, we love WordPress. However, when it comes to creating a website, it’s far from your only option. In fact, depending on your site’s purpose and focus, you may find there are solutions that are even better suited to your needs.
There are numerous tools and platforms out there. If you’re building a specific type of site, one of these options can sometimes be better than the one-size-fits-all package that WordPress offers.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the alternative solutions you can use to create your website. We’ll look at a few different types of sites, and talk about which platforms and tools could be the most useful for creating them. Let’s get started!
Keep servers close to your customers, even if that means a spike in costs
Yes, you heard it right. The location of your web hosting server has an impact on your pocket. Many companies in the west choose servers located in India and Bangladesh just to lower their costs.
This does not mean these countries provide servers that are any less competitive than those provided in the west. But, labor, machinery and technology are cheaper in developing markets.
Cutting costs by using servers that are a world away from your target audience may sound like a good idea in the short term, but is actually quite expensive as your business starts to lose customers.
Having a server close to your target market is key.