You may or may not ever need the details of how the Internet and World Wide Web works. It does help, though, to show that, if you are going to have a website, it must be hosted somewhere so that people can access it. There are several options that are available to you.
Self Hosting
Self hosting is where you buy your own server to host your website on. This gives you the most control, but it also gives you the most responsibility and liability. It takes time and money (not to mention technical know-how) to buy and maintain the hardware and software that you would need.
A better option for most people would be to find someone else and pay them to host it for them.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is an option where many websites are hosted on a single server. This is usually very cost-effective and provides a great way for people to get started. There could be potential issues if one of the sites on that server starts to get popular and overloads the server’s bandwidth. This will cause websites to run much slower (possibly driving people away from your site). Remember, you are sharing the server’s load with a dozen or more other websites, and so that limits how much is really dedicated to you (even though they say it’s unlimited).
This is the way that I would recommend most people to start with because you usually won’t have tremendous numbers that would cause those issues. But if your site does grow quite a bit, you may look into the next option.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is where you are the only one on that server. You don’t have to worry about sharing your bandwidth or storage space with anyone else. It is more expensive than shared hosting, but may be necessary if you are pulling a lot of traffic.
Virtual Private Server
This option provides even higher results than dedicated hosting. It is usually faster and handles a lot more. The price tag also increases with it as well.
BlueHost
There are many companies out there that provide hosting for websites. I personally use and recommend BlueHost. I had a different host for about 3 years, then switched to BlueHost about 18 months ago. The difference was amazing. I’ve had a great experience with them, and their customer service is great.
I do have an affiliate for them, so if you need a website and use my link, I’ll get a commission. It doesn’t cost you extra, it just helps me to cover the costs of running my business.
If you have any questions about hosting your website, please contact me and let me know. I’d love to help you as you get started.