A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to access your website. The computer that the web hosting company uses is typically just like the computer you have at home, the only difference being that it is set up to serve up web sites and is therefore called a "server".

A web host will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.

 
This is a picture of a datacenter. Which contains many PC's all connected to the Internet. Datacenters have reliable and fast connections to the Internet and also have backup power and high security.

Most web hosting companies do not own a datacenter, but rent web hosting space in a datacenter.


Disk Space This is the amount of actual space available to you for storing your website on the web server hard drive
Bandwidth / Month This is a measure of how much website traffic is available to you. Every time somebody looks at your website, data has to be passed over the Internet from the web server where your site is hosted to the browser of the person looking at your site. Bandwidth is a measure of how much transfer is available. High traffic sites like Yahoo for example have very high bandwidth requirements, but the average site does not
Email Accounts How many email accounts you can have with the web hosting account.


How Does My Website Get a Name ?
All websites typically have a name - just like we are called DrWebServer.com - This is a name that points to the space on the web where your website is physically located. In reality, your website will have an address which is just a set of numbers. This is called an IP address and it looks something like this 205.11.109.64 An IP address is a unique address (just like a street address) for your website location. Domain names like DrWebServer.com are really just a pointer to the real address. This makes it much easier to remember websites.

When you buy web hosting it can be easier to let the web host handle everything associated with this. You just tell them the name that you want (www.yoursite.com for example) and so long as that name is available, they will set up your web hosting space so that when people type in that www address, it will automatically go to your website. You can check if a domain name is available on our domain registration page.

If you already have a domain name and need to transfer it to a web hosting account, then the domain records have to be pointed to your web hosting company. Most web hosts will handle this for you, but if you need to do it yourself then you will need to contact the company where you registered your domain name and provide the Nameserver address of your web hosting provider. Your web host will tell you what their Nameservers address is.

You might want to buy your website name early to prevent somebody else taking the name you want. Almost all companies that sell domain names will park your domain on their servers until you are ready to buy web hosting.