Lesson 4Getting started with your eco web design: choose the right web host
- Notion 22 - How your website is supported: Domain- Host – Server – Data centre.
- Notion 23 - What is green web hosting and which criteria you should look for when choosing a green web host?
- Notion 24 - PUE rating and efficient web applications.
- Notion 25 - Best eco-friendly hosting to consider.
- Notion 26 - Self-hosting, a good idea?
- Notion 27 - Review/assessment
Notion 22
How your website is supported: Domain- Host – Server – Data centre.
Target skills
How to give birth to your website, or in other words – how to bring your web site to the Internet?
No matter what type of website you create, there are 4 main parts that collaborate in order to make your site go live.
Domain Name
First of all, your site would need an address so that anybody would know where to find it.
The domain name is the address of your website that people type in the browser’s URL bar to visit your website.
The internet is basically a huge network of connected computers. In order to be identified within this network each computer has an IP address, which is a series of numbers separated by dots: 78.256.66.2. The computers have no problem remembering these numbers and searching for each other by the IP address, but for us it can pose a problem. To solve this problem, the domain name was invented. It can use words instead of numbers so it is easy to remember a website address.
Web Hosting
Now that your site has got an address, you need to provide housing for all its content. This is provided by web hosting.
Web hosting is a place where all the files of your site live.
You usually pay a company that gives you this place on their computer. When someone introduces your domain name in a browser, this name is translated into an IP address of the company´s computer. This computer that stores all your website´s files sends them back to the user´s browser.
Domain name and web hosting are 2 different services, but both are needed to make websites function. Usually web hosting companies provide both services and it is more convenient to manage them. Although, you can get them separately from different providers.
The computer that stores your website´s information as well as a lot of other data (e-mails, database, website builder, control panels) is called a server.
Therefore, if we compare our website to a house, then a web hosting server would be a plot of land where it is built and a domain name would be our home address.
Data Centres
Servers usually form part of a data centre.
A data centre is a building that provides space, power and cooling for a big network infrastructure. The networks are composed of servers.
Data servers store, share, process and manage large amounts of data.