A website can exist, but without web hosting it will never be there to be found. What web hosting does is arrange for the space that your website will be taking up on the vast expanse of the Internet. There’s plenty of space to be had, but you need to have yours for your site and that is what is made available with web hosting services in Canada. It’s an essential resource to have for any collection of web pages found at domain, and maybe it’s even more essential if the website is for a business. We all know where most people look first for information about a retailer or service provider. Any business will need a mobile-friendly website to have the right type of visibility with these folks.
Fortunately web hosting is not expensive at all, although if you’ve got a big business with a heavy-traffic website then you will be paying more for dedicated hosting and having your site with its own server. But shared web hosting is decidedly inexpensive at all times, and a lot of sites for smaller-scale businesses will do just fine with it, and their provider is also going to be able to take care of domain registration in Canada. That will usually be the name of the business and then with either a .ca or .com domain extension, but some businesses like to go against that convention when it comes to choosing a domain for a website.
That part of the process is fairly simple, but a lot of people who are web technology savvy will be surprises to understand that domain hosting and web hosting are different from each other. Most of the sites you visit - including this one right now here at 4GoodHosting - are being made available to you via web hosting, but it may be that you’ve visited spots on the web before where it’s a different arrangement and you’re viewing the product of domain hosting. As you’d guess, what we do here makes us very qualified to explain the difference to you and so that is exactly what we’ll do with this blog entry.
One & The Other
Both web hosting and a domain are going to publish a website. Web hosting is the space occupied by your website occupies, and the address used to find that space is the domain.
Websites are hosted on specialized web servers - computers configured to run 24/7 that make site files accessible via web browsers. Web hosting involves placing and storing website files on these servers and most hosting providers here will be offering managed hosting services Canada.
When they go into business a large part of the extensive start-up capital they need will be used to buy and build servers and then finding spaces where they can physically exist. The space on these servers is then rented to those who need it with web hosting services Canada. Using a web host is the ideal way to make a website, as creating your own web server is expensive and labor-intensive.
A good web hosting company will also provide needed security with firewalls installed on their servers and tools that speed up your site, like caching and content delivery networks (CDNs). Shared hosting is going to involve several websites being located on the same single server. It is the most affordable option, but won’t be a good fit for high-traffic websites because sites share server resources. In the event traffic for one site spikes then there may be page-loading slowdowns for the other sites sharing the server. WordPress hosting is when the company pre-installs WordPress and updates the CMS for you and most commonly when the person has chosen to go with WordPress managed hosting services Canada. This is often shared hosting with the additional maintenance provided meaning a higher monthly cost for web hosting.
Then we come to Cloud hosting, which is when your website is located between several servers in different data centres. They make for faster loading speeds and much less downtime, but the tradeoff is having them be more expensive than shared hosting. VPS - virtual private server hosting - is going to be more expensive too. That’s to be expected when one physical server is separated into several virtual servers and each has dedicated resources designed to handle much higher traffic volumes.
We talked about dedicated hosting here earlier and it’s the most robust and reliable option for web hosting services Canada. With it you have access to a full physical server and your resources are best maximized. And then it will be the most expensive web hosting option but one that is going to be worth it the website is almost certainly going to have high inflows of visitors.
Defining a Domain
The name used to find a website is the site’s domain, and it will consists of two parts - The name and then the 2nd-level domain. As we talked about the most common approach to choosing a domain name is to use the company name, and it is very conducive to consistency in branding. The domain extension or top-level domain (TLD) is the .com you’ll see at the end of most domains, although here in Canada there are plenty of .ca examples and often it is the better choice up here.
Let’s look at the types of domains briefly. Most websites use one of two types of TLDs: country code top-level domains, or ccTLDs, and generic top-level domains, or gTLDs. Country code TLDs (ccTLDs) will reflect international country codes, and the example is easy to see with how ‘ca’ is for Canada. This signifies that a website operates in the country associated with its ccTLD. Many ccTLDs are available only to people or businesses with an address in the appropriate region.
It is advisable to use a ccTLD if you intend to cater to customers in a specific country. This is something you should keep in mind if you are ready for domain registration Canada but if you foresee having a more international audience then a gTLD (generic top level domain) is likely a better choice. They aren't restricted to a specific country or type of business and anyone can purchase them and use them for any type of website. The most newsworthy one these days is a .ai domain that is associated with companies that build AI tools.
Companies with international branches may use a gTLD for their main website and ccTLDs for branches in specific countries. The least common of all of them are sponsored top-level domains, which are restricted TLDs created by sponsor organizations. To get one the website must belong to a specific type of organization or company.
Now to talk about subdomains quickly as we continue this look at web hosting services Canada. A subdomain appears before the second-level domain and is used to partition part of a website from the rest. It functions to allows the domain and subdomain to stand alone and operate as separate websites with different information and layouts while maintaining consistent branding. The most common scenario when a subdomain is utilized is when a company’s website is partitioned to any extent. A company that has an e-commerce store will use a subdomain to separate that site and have it using a more specialized store layout. And anytime there is a free web hosting offer if is going to involve the use of a subdomain.
Domain Workings
Back in the early days of the Internet it was standard for websites to be linked only to IP addresses - long strings of numbers (ex. 192.0.2.148) used by computers use to identify websites. It wasn’t ideal to have to remember long numbers and the way domains made it easier to access the internet was a very welcome development. Every domain is connected to an IP address. Type a domain into your browser and the browser requests its IP address from domain name system. The IP address is then provided by the DNS and the browser moves to connect with it. Then the homepage will load for the viewer.
So web hosting and domains are working together within the parameters of managed hosting services Canada and they are ideal for providing the space for a site to exist and ongoing optimization of the site. Your website’s domain is not unlike the address you have somewhere on the exterior of your building. Yes, you can buy a domain without web hosting but you’ll only be displaying a blank page with ever server request response until you buy Canada web hosting to claim your domain and have the web address you need.
The last thing we’ll talk about before wrapping up this blog entry are instances when you might want to buy one service on its own. The first situation will be when someone has their eye on a domain but hasn’t even begun building a website yet. If you want a specific domain it is best to register it right away so nobody else can claim it before you. Web hosting costs more than domain registration, and there is free web domain registration here at 4GoodHosting if you’re signing up for one of our plans.
Then there’s the possibility of someone with a domain already claimed and ready to build a website. Transferring a domain to a new company isn’t practical if you’ve recently paid your renewal fees for registration and it may be more practical to connect it to your web hosting server instead. Some Canada web hosting providers charge more for domain registration but that’s the not the case here. We know it’s standard practice for some people to buy what they foresee will be in-demand domains and the resell them at higher prices.
Web hosting and domains are separate but interconnected tools, and the way they work together is at the heart of web hosting services Canada. With web hosting you get the space on the server and are made accessible on the internet. A simple definition for the domain is that it is the name of a website and connected to your site’s IP address / website name servers so anyone putting a server request knows the name to submit into the bar or search for.
As stated, both are going to be required to run a website, and usually it’s domain registration first and website second.
