Hosting Your Own Website (Yes, It's Rocket Science)

Okay so you know that you are on the internet but your web pages are not. So how do you get them on the net? Well, just create your website on your computer and then call up your ISP, have them flip some little doohickey and boom! Your website is online, right?

(*BUZZER SOUND*)

Wrong.

What is fundamentally wrong with this reasoning is if you know exactly what a web page is then it will eventually come to you that the only way people could connect with a website existing on your own computer would be if your computer was turned on all the time (which it probably isn't).

In fact, the bottom line is, to host your own website at home, you'd probably have to buy an extra computer that you could dedicate solely as a web server. Using your personal computer wouldn't cut it because any extra resource-intensive operations you did on it throughout the day would interfere with your website's performance.

Not only that but you would have to do all of the following:

Download, install and configure the Apache HTTP server software.
Download and install the Perl interpreter.
Climb in to the Apache httpd.conf configuration file and edit it properly so that you can run Perl scripting (so that you can run a feedback form) and possibly SSI scripting depending on your website's needs.

And believe me, you don't know what technobabble is until you've attempted all of the above.

And that's just for starters.

Woops.

What's the matter? Feeling a little faint already...? Heh heh.. I don't blame you.

But you're still not finished yet.

You would also have to...

Install a dedicated T1 line (super high-speed internet connection) in order to handle all the traffic going to your website. By the way, this costs a lot more than your average personal internet connection.
Be ready to fend off a relentless and malicious mob of heinous hackers, DDOS attackers, password crackers and various other nefarious felons lurking about in cyberspace who would be ever intent on virtually commandeering your computer and turning it into some kind of email spam drone or virus-malware depot.

Oh wait. What's that you say? You want to set up a blog?

Oh well then you would also have to do all of the following:

Download and install the PHP processor module (and know which extensions to install to avoid messing up the installation).
Download and install the MySQL database server. (Once again, you don't know what technobabble is until you've tried this.)
Download and install the Wordpress blogging software (which is scripted in PHP and needs a fully functioning MySQL database.) By the way, you would have to install Wordpress the hard way, i.e., manually which means dealing with even more gobbledy-geek configuration files and a lot of coddling to get it to play nice with your MySQL database.

And if you're reading this web page, well I'm guessing that you don't have the right kind of computer and/or the right kind of secure internet connection as well as all the technical expertise required to carry off all that high falutin' interweb geekery with alacrity and grace. Right?

And that, my friend, is why you need professional web hosting.

And what exactly is web hosting?

Well, web hosts are special companies that have all the specially configured computers and all the technical know-how required to make your website available on the internet to the entire world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

They provide a secure environment, they provide reliable access and they provide an easy user interface (usually called a control panel) to allow you to interact with your website in a bazillion different ways.

For example, your web host control panel will allow you to upload web pages you created on your own computer, set up your sales page to process online payments, quickly and easily install a blog and more. That is the job of professional web hosts and some of them do it very well and the best part is they don't charge you an arm and a leg for these services. In fact, it usually costs less than ten bucks a month.

For more information, check out the following page ~> What is a Web Host? There I also give the complete lowdown on my preferred web host (Hostgator) and why.