How to Separate Domain and Hosting: The Ultimate Guide to a New Hosting Company
When you’re deciding to launch a new website, the first thing that comes to mind is probably web hosting. After all, you’ll need somewhere to publish your site to, right?
But before you commit to a particular hosting service, it’s important to understand the differences between domain hosting and web hosting. Most hosting companies won’t make this distinction clear to you, so you might find yourself signing up for one service when you really wanted another.
The Difference In Meaning
One of the primary reasons why you might want to separate your domain from your web hosting is the difference in the way those terms are interpreted. Let’s take a look at how each one is defined.
A domain is a word or phrase that you use to identify your web presence. For example, if you have a blog and you want to connect it to your website, you could use the word “blog” as your domain. Your domain name is the part of the URL that people will type in to reach your site, for example www.example.com. If you run a website and you want to connect it to a forum, you could use “forum” as your domain name.
Web hosting is the service that you use to make your site available to the world. Your web hosting provider will give you a space on their servers, where you can store all the things you want to make available on the web, like your blog posts, web files, and more. In most cases, web hosting is entirely free.
So if you want to create a website for a company, school, or personal cause, you’ll need to look for a web host that offers these services for free. If, on the other hand, you want to create a blog for yourself, you can use any hosting service since you won’t be making any commercial use of the blog. A hosting provider that offers private blog hosting is a good choice. That way, you’ll be able to keep your blog totally private and secure and prevent any unauthorized parties from gaining access to it.
Importance Of A Fully Stocked DNS
If you’ve ever tried to set up a website before, you might have experienced issues with domain registration. After all, you’ll need a domain name that’s already taken, which is why most web hosts will ask you to sign up for a free trial period before you can purchase a domain name. During this time, you’ll need to enter all the DNS records manually, including the A record (the address of your site), the CNAME record (the name of your site, which will point to the A record), and the MX record (an email address where you can receive notifications from the DNS provider). If you’re not tech-savvy and are planning on handling this task yourself (especially since you won’t have any help from the host), then it’s advisable to choose a DNS provider who offers a completely automated setup. Doing this manually can take hours, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all, or works but doesn’t resolve all your issues, such as a slow or unstable Internet connection.
How To Find The Best Hosting For Your Needs
When choosing a host for the first time, it’s very important to do your research and find out what’s important to you. This way, you’ll choose a hosting service that meets your needs and doesn’t disappoint you later when you need to make changes. Here are some crucial factors to keep in mind when choosing a web host:
Features & Performance
The most important thing to consider is the features and performance of the hosting service. Do you want to use your hosting service to create a shop, blog, or a community forum? What kind of features do you need for the site you plan to create (multi-user capability, database, shopping cart, etc.)? How much memory and storage space do you need for the site (memory is important to keep in mind since it determines how your site will perform when lots of people visit it at the same time, while storage is fundamental to keep all your content organized)?
Also, make sure that the company you choose offers support via phone or live chat, as well as access to a documentation or FAQ section. Furthermore, do your research about the uptime guarantees the company provides – most web hosts guarantee 99.9% uptime, which is pretty good, but if they go down, they will get you back up and running as soon as possible, without any hassle. This is very important to us, since we’re dependent on our hosting service for our company’s very existence. If we can’t rely on them being available 24/7, then we’re screwed.
Budget
Budget is another crucial consideration when choosing a hosting service. You don’t want to choose a hosting service that is too costly, especially if you’re on a tight budget – it’s always better to choose a free service since you’ll have fewer problems down the line (if you’re on a tight budget, then you’ll either have to find a way to upgrade your hosting package later, or host your site elsewhere, which can be costly).
Also, make sure that the company you choose offers a reasonable amount of bandwidth – most web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, which is great, but if you have a very high traffic site, then you might want to choose a lower-bandwidth package to ensure that your site doesn’t slow down (this also depends on your site’s design – if you have a high-quality and professional-looking site with photo galleries and videos, then you might not need as much bandwidth as a personal blog, for example).
Security
Finally, make sure that the hosting service you choose is secured. You don’t want anyone to be able to access your site and steal your content, do you? The most common way for hackers to steal content is via hacked email accounts. Therefore, make sure that the company you choose offers secure email accounts (also known as HSM, or hosted sign-up emails) and that their security is up to date, in case someone tries to hack into your account (this can be difficult to do if the email security is up to date and strong, so be sure to ask about it specifically).
At this point, you should have a clear idea of what’s important to you when choosing a web host. You don’t want to choose a hosting service that doesn’t offer what you need, and you especially don’t want to choose one that can’t be trusted. Choosing a hosting service that meets your needs and has a good reputation is crucial, and it will save you tons of hassle in the long run. Remember that everything is connected, and if you want to create a successful web presence, then you’ll need to consider all the aspects discussed above, otherwise, you’ll find yourself in trouble sooner or later.