Web Hosting Solutions Guide

This is a series of articles, that explain in demystified terms, what web hosting is all about. The idea is not to make you a professional in the field – that would require specialized training, and would take many years – but to make you conversant with the concepts in the field, so that you can ask the right questions that really matter.

First Encounters with Web Hosting

For most people, they first come to hear of the term “Web Hosting”, when they want to build a website for their business. They are presented with a dazzling array of choices, jargon, and then some more choices. A confused businessman just knows one thing – He needs to have a nicely designed website that serves his purpose, and he wants it to be accessible, and he wants it cheap.

So Lets get you Started with the Basics

In order to understand many of the future articles, you need to understand what are web applications, what they consist of, how they work, and what resources they require.

Web Pages

The first thing that you need to know, is that an application consists of interconnected Web Pages. Web Pages, are nothing but files, in a certain specific format. Now, these files, like the files on your computer, use up space. Storage Space. So we have already learned something – We need a place to store these files.

There are fundamentally two types of files. Files that, when they come to your browser, always show the same content (i.e. they are Static), and files that, when they are displayed on your browser, show different (or dynamic) content, based on the situation.

An example of a static web page, might be a corporate company profile, where the company’s core values remain the same irrespective of any other circumstance. An example of a dynamic page, may be when a firm’s sales figures are shown in real time. Each time you visit the same page, you might get different figures based on what the company’s total sales is at that point of time.

As you must have guessed, displaying static web pages is simpler, and cheaper than dynamic ones.

Servers

Servers are typically very powerful computers that, among other things, provide a storage space for your files. You may ask, why can’t I store the files in my own office? The answer, is you can. The catch is however, that your office computers will probably not have the kind of resources it takes to host files on the Internet.

You see, Servers are fussy creatures. They need to be on ALL the time. You can’t just restart them whenever you choose. They need to run specialized software that can provide the typical services of a server. They need to have huge RAM and storage space. Most importantly, they need to be reliable in terms of Data Integrity. You cannot have a power fluctuation scrap the hard disk!

In light of all this, the hardware for Servers is usually very expensive, and requires even more resources to maintain it, taking regular backups, adding new software and updates, and defending against worms and Viruses. Most companies, are neither rich enough, nor technologically competent enough to have their own Servers, and hence, they outsource this Functionality to other companies, that specialize in this field.

Also, Servers perform much more than just store your files. They typically provide you with a host of other services that we will not go into at this point. Suffice to say, that the services that are provided go hand in hand with the particular scheme that you have worked out with your provider.

How Web Pages Come To Your Browser

You have seen what Web Pages are, and where they are stored, and now it’s time for you to see how you finally manage to see them on your Browser.

Most likely, web pages that you have seen, have been nicely laid out, with Graphics, and carefully chosen and positioned fonts. In fact, this is usually much more critical than the actual content! Suppose you were confronted with a three thousand word article, with no formatting, headings, and paragraphs, it is unlikely you would have the patience to go through it.

This means that Web Pages, being fundamentally files which have text in them, must somehow store this complex formatting information within themselves. To do this, they have a special Language that describes this formatting, as well as the content itself. This Language is called Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a standard language that is understood in a very specific way, by every browser on the market, so that each browser displays your pages in the very same way.

HTML however, is only a markup language, i.e. it deals only with formatting issues. It only shows how to present the content that is already there in the file. What about the content itself? Well, if the content is static, then it can be placed along with the HTML, and all is fine. But what about dynamic web pages, where the content is always changing?

For these situations, there are other languages that do the job of determining the content. Some such Languages are Java, ASP, ASP.NET, and PHP. Now, all these languages, need to be understood by the Server, so that it can do what the language tells it to do. Based on how complex the Server is, or the scheme which you have, different Servers will understand different languages. Typically, more expensive schemes allow you to use varied languages.

So before a Web Page comes to your browser, it is first Processed by the Server itself. After the Server does whatever the language in the Web Page tells it to do, it sends the outcome of it’s processing to your Browser. This outcome is typically HTML that is generated after the Server has finished Processing the Web Page.

Once the Web Page reaches your Browser, your Browser looks at the HTML, and based on that, shows you the Content with the formatting as described by the HTML.
That’s It!

You have just seen how a Web Page is Displayed on your Web Browser. You now know everything you need to know, in order to ask the right questions that will allow you to decide what service you want to go for.

In the next article, we will see why do you need a web server, what is a web server .