Hello and welcome back to web technology core concepts at Learning Journal. In the earlier video, I talked about the need for a web server. You might be wondering that if we install the web server software on our computer, can we run a website from our home. The answer is a Yes and a No. Technically you can host a website on your home computer with some additional settings and configurations. However, we don't do that for some practical and economic reasons. And that's what we want to discuss in this video.
Problems of hosting website on home computer
We have following primary challenges to host a website on our home computer.
- You need a constant, high speed, Internet connection with a massive data plan.
- You need a continuous power supply for your computer and your router.
- You need a static IP address for your computer.
There are some other challenges as well, but at this stage, these three are enough to reject
the idea of hosting a website
at your home. If your Internet connection is down or your computer is switched-off due to some
power
failure, or it fails due to some hardware or software problem that means your website is also
down
for the same time. You might not want that to happen, Right?
Assume that the size of your web page is 1 MB. To support ten views per second, you need a
little
more than a 10 MBps Internet connection. The same ten views per second aggregates to
approximately
864K views per day. So you would be consuming 864 GB data per day. If you sum up the speed and
data
together, then you need an Internet connection with 10 MBps speed and 864 GB of data per month.
You
should also add the cost of electricity and power backup.
The cost to host a website at your home is an expensive affair. We are not even considering
the
cost and effort of a backup system and a technical person to maintain this system. The cost and
the
complexity is the main reason behind rejecting the idea of hosting a website at your home
computer.
The static IP address is another reason that holds us back from hosting a website on our
computer.
The IP address is one of the most critical components of your website address. If the IP
address
changes, the request from the browser won't be able to reach to your computer, Right? It is
like
the phone number has changed and the call goes to the wrong person.
The IP address should not change. And that's not the case with our standard home Internet
connection.
Every time you connect your computer to the Internet, your ISP assigns an IP address to your
computer.
But they do not guarantee that your computer gets the same IP address every time.
I hope you understand the main challenges. So, the next question is.
Where to host your website?
Well, you need a website hosting service. What is that? Some companies offer you an economical and simple solution to host your website. They take care of the computer, the web server software, Internet connection, speed, bandwidth, power supply, IP address, hardware failures, software upgrades, maintenance and many other problems. In fact, they take care of most of your headache for a reasonable price.
Types of Hosting Services
There is a variety of hosting services, and they name it differently depending on the services and technology they offer. Some of the standard terms used for hosting services are listed here.
- Shared Hosting
- Dedicated HostingVirtual Private Server
- Virtual Private Server
- Managed Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- Grid Hosting
- Video Hosting
You keep searching for the types of hosting services, and you will be discovering a bunch of
different terms. So don't get
trapped into those fancy names. End of the day, they all are different packages of the hosting
services.
And by the end of this learning path, you will be well equipped to select a right hosting
service
for your projects.
You will be amazed to know that there are companies, which offer a free hosting service for
beginners
and start ups. You don't need to pay a penny in the beginning. However, you will be spending a
reasonable
price when your website grows bigger.
As we proceed through the training, we will help you understand the process of hosting and
deploying
your website to some of these vendors. But for now, I want you to become familiar with the
concepts
and the terminologies. See you again in the next video.
Thank you for watching Learning Journal. Keep learning and keep growing.