Accommodation is the act and result of staying or lodging (hosting, housing, sheltering). Web, for its part, is the name used to name the international computer network that allows access to certain information over the Internet.
The service of storing data that is accessible through the Internet is known as web hosting. Web hosting (also called web hosting or simply hosting ), therefore, consists of hosting text, photos, videos and other types of documents on a server.
It should be noted that a server is an application that can respond to requests made by a user (client). By extension, the computer that has this application capable of responding to clients is known as a server. In this way, web hosting implies the storage of information on a server, which "responds" to the requests made by Internet users by showing the data in question.
Putting technical issues aside and simplifying the concept, web hosting can be understood as the space where websites and emails are stored. Suppose a company that sells sports shoes wants to have a website on the Internet. Once you have the site designed, you must hire the web hosting service to upload it to the network and to achieve, through an Internet address or domain, that people can access the content.
There are web hosting services that are free, although they offer limited features (in terms of the space to save the information or the data traffic they allow) and also display advertising on their clients' pages. For professional websites, specialists recommend paying for web hosting and getting a more comprehensive service.
One of the most common practices is to start with a free hosting service while the site is under development, and only move to a paid one when the process is complete. It should be mentioned that this does not affect at all the purchase of the domain, that is, the name or the address of the site: one can acquire it and use it to access various servers throughout the duration of the contract.
Choosing a good web hosting service is, therefore, a fundamental point when developing a site, since its performance and success will also depend on its characteristics. One of the fundamental points at present is the compatibility with Content Management Systems ( CMS ), a group that includes Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, among others.
Unlike what happened in the 90s, a time when programmers faced the development of pages from the beginning, today it is very common to rely on one of these powerful sets of scripts, since they save us time that we can take advantage of other aspects, such as graphic design and commercial promotion.
Another concept to keep in mind is uptime , a term in English that refers to the proportion of time that the site remains online. The normal thing is that companies offer an uptime of 99%, since it is practically impossible for the service to be interrupted once in a while.