What is hosting?
To follow up the last blog post where I described what domain names are, I figured a overview of hosting and exactly what it is and why you need it was in order. I recommend taking a look at that before reading this one since I’m going to use some terminology outlined there.
Data centers and expensive people
A lot of people misunderstand what web hosting really “is”. Try to image a huge building, actually several buildings all across the planet, with armed guards, bio metric security and some other security I won’t mention. Now inside that building are a bunch of really really expensive computers. We put your web site files there, all of the images, the pages that connect to the database, everything goes up there. There is a huge group of really geeky people that make sure these computers are running. That includes apply patches, hardware maintenance and a whole load of things that you and I can’t do because it’s hard. Really hard. Because it’s not easy these people charge a lot to keep your servers happy. So there are a lot of costs just to keep the Web site loading when people type it in the address bar. Thus a monthly fee is needed to keep those files on the server and keep your MX records pointing to the mail server.
Hosting Setup
When you register your domain with point2point we have it setup to automatically configure the domain our Web server so you don’t have to mess with any pesky name servers. If you registered through Godaddy or another registrar I have made some instructions to easily walk you through it. Once those name servers are pointing to us the site will go live and the e-mail comes live.
Once your order is completed you’ll receive a e-mail with the following information:
- How to login to your web mail
- How to add/edit/remove users
- How to access your calendar system
- How to access your document system
- How to access your internal sites
There is a lot more to hosting then just this, will continue later.
