The computer club has built a website for the school. It works perfectly — on the laptop it was made on. Nobody at home can open it, and it vanishes when the laptop is switched off. To be on the web, it needs a home that never sleeps.
1What web hosting is
🔑Web hosting
Web hosting is a service that lets us put a website or web page onto the Internet, so that it becomes part of the World Wide Web. The website’s files are kept on a web server that is always connected to the Internet.
A school could run its own web server, but it would need to be on, and online, all day and night. Usually, space is rented from a web hosting service provider, which runs many servers in a data centre. The rent pays for storage, bandwidth and backups, and can be increased as the website gets busier.
☁️ Putting a school website online
Play the steps, or go one at a time. Drag sideways to turn.
Press ▶ Play to host the school's website, step by step.
www.sunriseschool.example uses .example and 203.0.113.25 a documentation block, so neither belongs to a real site.
2How to host a website
Build the website on your own computer.
Choose a web hosting provider and rent space on its server.
Register a domain name.
Upload the website's files to the server.
Map the domain name to the server's IP address (DNS).
Anyone, anywhere, can now open the website.
A web server on the Internet has an IP address, but people type domain names. So the domain name has to be registered (bought) through an authorised agency, a domain name registrar, and then linked to the server’s IP address in DNS.
🏬
Think of renting a shop in a market
You could sell from your house, but nobody would find you and you would have to stay open all night. Instead you rent a shop in a busy market (hosting), put up a signboard with your shop’s name (the domain name), bring in your goods (upload the files), and get listed in the market directory (DNS).
📝This website is hosted too
The lesson you are reading is a set of files on servers run by a hosting service. Your browser found them through the domain name lambdalab.in.
3From the board papers
1
Define the term web hosting.CBSE board exam 2024
1 mark
▶Show the answer
Web hosting is a service that allows individuals and organisations to put their website on a web server connected to the Internet, so that it can be accessed by anyone on the World Wide Web.
4Check yourself
✏️ Quick Check
Why can people not open a website that is only saved on a school laptop?
✏️ Quick Check
After uploading the files and registering the domain name, what must still be done so visitors can type the name?