Web Hosting FAQ | Learn about Web Hosting

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is web hosting? What's a web host?
• Why do I need it?
• What is a domain name?
• How do I register a domain?
• What is bandwidth? And storage space?

Questions and answers

Q: What is web hosting? What's a web host?

A: Web hosting is performed by a web host, a person or company that rents publishing space for your website on the Internet.

There are two basic types of hosting: free and paid. Free hosting doesn't provide nearly as much service or owner control as paid web hosting. When you pay to be hosted, you get complete control over your website.

Q: Why do I need it?

A: You need web hosting and web hosts in order to publish on the Internet. Websites need reliable hosts in order to keep the content online and able to be viewed.

Q: What is a domain name?

A: A domain name is the name of a website. You usually want it to be simple and easy to remember. For example, our domain name is voipreview.org.

Q: How do I register a domain?

A: Registering a domain is very simple. Check with a web host to see if the domain name you want belongs to someone. If it isn't taken, the host will register the domain to you for a certain period of time (usually by months or years). You pay for them for the registration. That's all there is to it.

Q: What is bandwidth? And storage space?

A: Storage space (also known as diskspace) refers to the size of your website.

Each letter on your site is one byte of data. One million bytes is a megabyte. One billion bytes is a gigabyte. Storage space is where your data (those letters that make up the code) is stored. It represents your site's location—and, because that's where your pages are, what your site is. Your actual web pages shouldn't take up that much storage space – the majority of the space it taken up by images, scripts, databases, and other things that are stored in or used by the web pages.

Bandwidth is the rate at which data transfers, technically speaking. So, if storage space represents where and what your website is, bandwidth is what allows people to see it. You should have more bandwidth than storage space.

Bandwidth is much more expensive and valuable than storage space. If your two page website on how VoIP works becomes very popular, you won't need more storage space (unless you want to add more pages). But you will need more bandwidth.