WordPress Web Site Hosting

Everyone needs a solid understanding of what web site hosting is and how it works. Here at Oakley Studio we use WordPress as the “framework” for all new client web sites. This is a very affordable way to get a new web site up and running quickly.

Anyone with some basic training can own and operate their own WordPress web site, with little need for ongoing webmaster intervention. WordPress is essentially a container for all the web pages you create. WordPress provides a way to organize information so it is easy to “navigate” and find. And WordPress allows you to choose from thousands of designs to select the perfect look and feel for your own site, and to customize that design for your specific purposes.

What follows is a “glossary of terms” that are commonly used to describe and explain web site hosting. Being familiar with this “lingo” and what it means will help you communicate effectively with your webmaster.

What Is Web Site Hosting?

A web page is a single page, like a page in a book or magazine. It usually contains text and may also be accompanied by images (pictures: photos or illustrations, diagrams, charts & graphs etc.) or videos. Web pages usually also contain clickable links to other pages.

The mix of text + images + video + links in a web page is collectively referred to as web page content. When you are viewing a web page, you are looking at it content. You are reading the content of a web page. (Also sometimes referred to as “browsing,” “surfing,” or “scanning.”)

A web site consists of a group or collection of related web pages. Some web sites have just a few pages, and some have many hundreds or thousands of pages. Each web page in a site has it’s own unique address, or URL.

Web pages are viewed in a web browser. A web browser is like a window through which you view web pages. There are a handful of brand-name web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, and others. Each web browser may have some slightly different features, but they all are designed to display web pages. Web browsers are applications that are used on a desktop computer, laptop computer, tablet, or smart phone. All these devices come with some kind of web browser for displaying web pages.

Every web page has a unique address which allows it to be located on the World Wide Web.

All the web pages in all the web sites all over the world are collectively known as the World Wide Web. Any page of any web site can linked to any other web page anywhere in the world.

Web sites reside on a server. They are said to be “hosted,” on a server. A web server is a specialized computer configured to do one primary task — serve web pages. A web server is serving web pages to anybody who asks for them. People requesting web pages are VISITORS.

When you “visit” a web site, it simply means you are requesting a page from that web site, The page resides on a server somewhere out there on the vast global internet, but you can type an address in your web browser and the request is sent out, finds its way to the proper server, and a web page is delivered (“displayed”) in your web browser. Nearly instantly.

Continue on to explain where the web site resides — on a SERVER — that is always connected to the INTERNET. Each web page has a unique ADDRESS (URL) No two pages have the same address. Web page addresses are based on DOMAIN NAMES. A domain name specifies the address of a web site. No two web sites have the same domain name; every web site has a unique name.

Servers all have unique IP ADDRESSES. DNS matches up domain names with IP addresses. When someone requests a web page, the domain name is translated to an IP address, and the request is sent to that address — a specific server. It is then the server computer’s responsibility to look at the rest of the URL, identify the specific web page that is being requested (from all the pages in a web site) and send that page back to the visitor who has requested it. This all happens very fast, almost instantly but can sometimes take a few seconds, but generally no more than that.

A web server typically hosts many sites, and the server is able to identify which pages from which web sites associated with lots of different domain names that are being requested, and it’s job is to send those pages to the requesting browsers as quick as possible.

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