Getting Started with Hosting
Introduction
Hosting is a pretty general term that is often used to refer to a number of services related to hosting, in addition to the hosting itself.
Specifically, when someone hosts for you, they are providing you a hardware, software, or service that you and/or others can access over the internet. It could be a website, and most often is, but can also refer to email, files, databases, software, or connectivity, among other things.
As it pertains to this page, Hosting is the service that Computerisms or other companies such as GoDaddy or Canadian Web Hosting provides, and is related to your domain name and the related services linked by it. This page will give a very brief overview of what you, as someone who is figuring out how to get into hosting, will need to know.
Domain Name
Before any hosting can take place, you must first own a domain name. Own is a strong word, since really you can only buy one year at a time, so maybe rent might be a better word for it. Regardless, it needs to be registered in your name, and it is required to have a findable place on the internet, much like your house must have an address in order to be findable in your town.
Domain names are parsed from right to left. Every thing to the right of the right-most dot, at least in most cases, is consider the Top Level Domain, or TLD. Everything between the rightmost dot in the domain name and dot to the left of that is considered the 2nd level domain, and this generally the namespace that identifies you most specifically. In our case, computerisms is the 2nd level domain, and .ca is our TLD. Anything to the left of your 2nd level domain is generally referred to as a subdomain, but could also be referred to as a 3rd level domain.
The most common TLD is .com, which is run by the organization called ICANN, but another very common TLD is .ca, which is run by the organization CIRA. Many other countries and organizations also have TLDs, such as .org, .tv, .pro, .info, .br, and so on. These organizations keep track of all 2nd level domains in their respective TLD, so for example, once I have registered computerisms with CIRA, computerisms.ca is now taken, and nobody else can take computerisms.ca unless I let it expire. However, someone could go buy computerisms.com if I haven't bought it yet.
For a full list of all the TLDs that are available, consult This Page
In order to prevent others from occupying your 2nd level domain namespace, some people think it is a good idea to buy up the 2nd level domain in as many TLDs as is reasonable, so they might buy domain.com, domain.ca, domain.org, and domain.net. Overall, this is not terribly expensive in the big scope of things, and it can prevent problems in the future. A good example of this; I used to work at YKNet, the Yukon's first Internet Service Provider, and the website for that company was at the domain yknet.ca. I used to get regular phone calls that our site had been hacked because there was porn all over it. It turned out that another company had bought the domain yknet.com and hosted a porn site, and that the people who were calling me were going to yknet.com instead of yknet.ca. So it would have been a good idea to buy that .com name in that case. But it is by no means necessary for you to do this in order for your website and related services to work, and in fact the site at yknet.ca did work just fine.
If you want see if your chosen 2nd level domain and TLD combination is available, you can use a site like This One.
When people are talking about domain names, they typically combine the 2nd level domain and the TLD, and refer to that as their "domain name". So computerisms.ca and computerisms.com would both be considered as 2 separate domain names in conversation.
Once you have chosen your domain name and made sure nobody else has taken it already, then you need a registrar to get your domain name(s) registered for you. A registrar is basically any organization that is authorized to sell domain names, so companies like Computerisms can do this for you, but there are a virtual plethora of registrars available online where you can register it as well.
Each TLD has its own rules, but generally you can own any domain name for up to 10 years, and they are sold by the year, so if you are sure you will still be using the domain name in 5 years, you can buy all 5 of those years in one block.
Building a Website
Websites are built by Web Designers; they are basically the artists who listen to what you say, and turn it into what you want to see.
In a lot of cases, a company that offers hosting also builds the sites, but the two things are not necessarily related. Many people, for example, can build a website, but know nothing of how to setup a web server so that people can find it on the internet. Computerisms is an example of a company that provides the hosting, but does not provide the artistic services of building sites.
There are two basic kinds of websites; static HTML, and CMS.
Static HTML sites are the old-school way of doing things. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was pretty much the only way to build a site, and it involves writing the whole site in code. There are some advantages to this still. For example, it is generally much harder to hack a site that is built in static HTML. Unfortunately, if the site has multiple pages and several features, it is far more time consuming to build, and updates to such a site are much more complex, which usually translates to much more expensive. However, if you are just wanting a single page "business card" site that is not likely to change much over time, this can be a quick and inexpensive way to get something online.
CMS, or Content Management Systems, are the modern way of building web sites, and they should be used for all but the most basic of websites. Common software that are used to build a CMS site include Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and MediaWiki, though that list is far from exhaustive. It should be noted that sites using this kind of software require consistent software updates in order to minimize the risk of the site being hacked, so they really shouldn't be treated as "fire and forget"; someone, either your web designer, your employee, or you, should be actively maintaining these kinds of site on a regular schedule. These software make it much easier to build features into a site, such as photo galleries, contact forms, and E-Commerce. They also make it much easier to maintain a consistent layout and colour scheme through every page, and most importantly to update content on the site. In most cases, someone who wants a website will get the Web Designer to build the site in a CMS, and then they can handle content and software updates themselves, thereby saving a lot of money.
A discussion on websites in the modern environment would not be complete without mentioning services such as Wix and Weebly. Both of these services offer an easy and inexpensive way to get a website online, so are a great option for beginners. They also offer easily usable advanced features, such as ecommerce, so can also be a good resource for more advanced situations. However, there are a few things to be aware of. First, they do not do email hosting or any other service other than websites, so it becomes your responsibility to make sure that someone sets everything up correctly between Wix/Weebly and your other hosting services. Also, if you ever want to move away from these services, the site is not transferable, so you will have to get a new one built. And as a final point, make sure that the site gets built under an account you will have control over; we have encountered several situations where access to a site has been completely lost because it was built under the account of someone else. Overall, services like Wix and Weebly have their place, but it is advised that you be sure that your long term plans can work within their system before using it.
Getting a web site built is usually the most expensive component in the whole hosting package. it can range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on factors such as what features the site has and how much content is being presented, and this should be discussed with the Web Designer.
The Actual Hosting
Once you have a domain name, and a web site to present to the public, you need a way for people on the Internet to be able to find and see your site. This is where the hosting provider comes in.
The hosting provider is going to setup his servers so that services can work with your domain name. In most situations, this is going to consist of 3 parts, but if you are using more advanced services it will probably consist of more.
The first part is Domain Name Services, or DNS, and the hosting provider is going to set that up so that your domain name can be matched to specific servers on the internet that are going to provide services based on your domain name. In addition to your main domain, this can also be used to create sub-domains for various other services. For example, if your domain name is domain.tld, your mail service might be found at the subdomain mail.domain.tld, and if you subscribe to a VoIP service, you could refer to your VoIP server as pbx.domain.tld. DNS is how computers on the Internet are going to be able to find that server and know that it is your service they are connecting to instead of someone else.
The 2nd common part is the site. Once your site has been built by a Web Designer, it will need to go on your hosting provider's servers, and that server will need to be configured to respond with your website when a request comes in for it. There are several technical aspects to making this work, but generally these aspects will either be handled directly by the designer, or will be worked out between the designer and the hoster, so generally there won't be any thing you will need to know about this aspect of things.
And the 3rd most common component is email. The hosting provider will configure their server so that all mail being delivered to your domain will arrive at their server, and that each individual address will have its own inbox, and in turn will provide a way so that each person can check their address. Different hosting providers will have different packages that they offer; some will limit the amount of email storage you can use, some will limit the number of email addresses you can have, and most will do both. It is arguable that email is probably the most important aspect of hosting because it is such a common and important way of communicating, so having an idea of how you will be using email in your hosting environment and choosing a hosting provider that matches your requirements is a good idea.
Advanced Hosting Services
In addition to the basics of DNS, website, and email, there are several other services that can be tied to your domain name. A common example of this is Calendars. Calendars are often hosted on a hosting server so that multiple people can access them at once. In most (maybe all) cases, Calendars are going to have a permissions matrix so that some calendars are private and some calendars can be accessed by the whole organization, and any number of combinations in-between.
Other services that might be available like this include online Address Books, Online File Storage (Like Dropbox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, etc...), Large file Transfer services (like YouSendIt), Mailing List providers (like MailChimp), and VoIP services.
Not all services are required to be provided by the same hosting provider. It does require some knowledge of how to setup your DNS records, but in most cases your hosting provider can help you with this, if they don't just handle it for you as part of their service.
Wrap Up
Hopefully this page gave you a solid overview of what you need to get started with hosting. If you have any further questions, Computerisms is here to help, feel free to reach out.