Web hosting is the home where all your crucial files and media live for your website. Your web hosting also provides the connection so your viewers can access your website online. A web hosting provider sells/rents space on their servers for your website files. It is usually the website hosting provider's responsibility to maintain their servers and provide you with customer support whilst you use them.
Websites need to be hosted on a server/computer that is always connected to the internet. This connection allows the server to be able to show your visitors your website. When your audience wants to view your website, they'll enter your website address (domain name). This will tell the user's browser where to find the website and its files.
Domain names tend to be purchased separately from a hosting package but can be purchased through the hosting provider.
Web hosting packages will give you access to many online functions such as:
Control Panel Access
Your control panel is an online portal where you can log in and gain access to the various features of your website hosting. From your control panel, you can control features like email accounts, manage files, set up an email account and change settings on your domain names. Most control panels come with automatic app installation scripts allowing you to add platforms such as WordPress.
Access to manage email accounts
Adding your domain name to your hosting account allows you to set up email accounts that will be controlled through your website hosting.
Your hosting server will provide space to store all your sent and received emails. Through the control panel, you'll be able to set up, change and delete all the email accounts you may need.
The control panel will allow you online access to your emails using software commonly known as WebMail. You'll be given a special unique website address to the visitor and once you've entered your email and password, you'll be able to access your emails anywhere with an internet connection.
Your control panel will also hold the information/settings for you to be able to set up your devices where you would like to retrieve your emails.
FTP Access allows you to access the files on your server
FTP allows you to access your files on your server. Through software, on your computer (Filezilla, Cyberduck, Transmit) you can easily upload and download your files. FTP can be a secure way of connecting to your server and uploading regular changes to your website.
Customer support
Choosing a managed website hosting solution is important because it means that you don't have to get bogged down with the technically day-to-day running of your website's servers. Being backed up by an excellent customer service team like ours at Clook, makes your website hosting journey a lot easier. This approach allows you to concentrate on more important things like your business and creating content.
Database management
Through your control panel, you can action anything you need to with your MySQL databases. Within just a few clicks you can create, download or even delete a database. You will also have access to phpMyAdmin which allows you to go into a database and change field content, rows and columns.
Backup management
Web hosting can provide you space to keep regular copies of your website. It's important to keep regular backups of all your website files and databases. In your control panel, you are able to schedule when to take a backup, and you'll be able to roll back your website to a previous version.