What is web hosting? A plain guide for beginners

If you're setting up your first website, “hosting” is one of those words everyone uses and nobody quite explains. Here it is in one sentence: web hosting is renting space on a computer that's always on and always connected to the internet, so your website is there whenever someone visits. Everything else is detail.

How a website actually reaches a visitor

Three pieces work together. Your domain is the address people type (yourbusiness.co.uk). DNS is the internet's phone book — it translates that address into the location of your server. And your hosting is the server itself, where your site's files and database live. Type the address, DNS points the browser at the host, the host sends back your pages. A domain without hosting is an address with no building behind it; hosting without a domain is a building no one can find.

The main types of hosting

• Shared hosting — your site shares a well-maintained server with others. Affordable, simple, and plenty for most small business sites, blogs and starter shops. The right starting point for almost everyone.
• VPS — a guaranteed private slice of a server, for busier sites or ones needing specific software. More power, a bit more hands-on.
• Managed hosting — someone else handles updates, backups and tuning for you. Costs more; worth it when your time is better spent on the business.
• Cloud hosting — resources spread across multiple machines so the site scales with demand. Flexible, usually pay-as-you-go.

We go deeper on choosing between these in how much hosting do you actually need.

The jargon, decoded

• Bandwidth — how much traffic your plan allows. Comfortable headroom is good; paying for ten times your reality isn't.
• SSD storage — fast disk space for your files and database.
• Uptime — the percentage of time the server is online. Look for 99.9%+.
• SSL — the certificate that gives you the padlock and https://. Should be free and automatic (see what is SSL).
• cPanel / control panel — the dashboard where you manage email, files and settings.

What good hosting looks like

Fast servers, free auto-renewing SSL, email included, real backups, and support answered by a human. And two things that aren't on the spec sheet: honest renewal pricing (the cheap first year that triples later is the oldest trick in the book — work out the year-two price) and no lock-in, so you can leave if you ever need to.

Getting started

In practice you pick a domain, choose a hosting plan, point the domain at the host, and install your site (often one click for WordPress). That's exactly what Centaur sets up for you — domain, hosting, SSL and email — plainly priced and ready the same day.