What is the site?
To understand what web hosting is, you first need to understand what a website is.
A website will consist of a set of documents. These documents can be code files, images, videos, etc. All the documents constituting your site will belong to the same “root” folder. This folder will then be able to itself contain other folders. To be convinced of this, let’s look at what a basic PrestaShop installation looks like, for example, All the documents constituting your PrestaShop site will be located inside a first “PrestaShop” folder. This folder will then itself contain other folders and documents. The subfolders will still be able to contain other files and documents and etc. The different documents contained in the root folder will then work together. Thus, the various pages of your site will often use a page contained in a folder, and files contained in such or such folder of your installation.
The premises and the production
If you download the WordPress software, then you have all the elements of your site already ready.
However, for the moment, your “WordPress” folder is located on your own computer, and only you can access it, just as only you can access your other files on your computer a priori. Working with your files on your computer is called working “locally”. This is generally opposed to working in “production” or “live”, i-e work on a site already present on the web. Indeed, so that other people can access your site, you will have to place your folder containing your documents using WordPress hosting in Pakistan on the Internet.
The server and the client
How a user can access your website?
To start, he will have to open a browser (Google Chrome for example) and type a request, that is to say, ask to access your site by typing for example the address (URL) of your site. The computer that will ask to access a web page is called the client. On the other side, there is going to be a server. The server will be the computer on which the requested site is hosted and even a shared hosting plan can be offered.
A server is therefore also a computer, but which will have quite special characteristics. First of all, a server will (theoretically) be connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that your site is always accessible. Second, a server is usually going to be much more powerful than a “normal” computer. The server will be responsible to host your website and send the web pages requested by the users.
What is a web host/hosting?
We say that the server will “host” your website and offering web hosting in Pakistan. If you’ve followed everything so far, you should be wondering if you can’t be your own server yourself.
In theory, it is quite possible: you can turn your computer into a server and host your own site yourself and send it yourself on the Internet. However, this is strongly discouraged. Indeed, first of all, you would need a computer and a connection that is really very, very powerful and constantly operational in order for your visitors to properly access your website, and that would already cost you a lot of money. Then, you would need a lot of specialized knowledge in network architecture in particular in order to properly configure different aspects of your hosting and your website, in order on the one hand to have an operational site and on the other hand a secure site.
These two constraints mean that we will always prefer to use a professional hosting company, which specializes in web hosting.
Why do I need professional hosting?
Everyone can access your website once hosted on a reliable and cheap web hosting server. We will use companies specializing in this field for two main reasons: reliability and cost. Indeed, the (good) hosting companies first had to make significant investments to obtain powerful and reliable servers.
Then, these hosts will offer to rent us part of their server, or even an entire server in some cases, so that we can place our installation there. We can compare this process to MRI (medical imaging) for example the machines used to do MRIs are extremely expensive. So when you need to have an MRI, you don’t go and buy the machine yourself; instead, you will go to a specialized clinic, and pay a certain price for the use of this machine.
The hosts, in addition to having very powerful servers and connections, will generally also offer third-party services such as customer service at your service and cheap web hosting, automatic installations of certain software, access to ready-made site themes, etc.
About the author
DMTwebhosting.com’s Editorial Team prides itself on bringing you the latest web hosting news and the best web hosting articles!
You could also link to the news and articles sections: