How to Host a Website for Beginners (Locally and/or Publicly)

adminMarch 13, 2023

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Launching a new website involves many decisions, not the least of which is hosting. When you’re new to owning a website, figuring out how to host a website can quickly become confusing and overwhelming.

Fortunately, once you’ve explored the options available to you, you can Determining your website’s hosting requirements is fairly simple. Learning the basics should enable you to make wise decisions and choose the type of hosting that works best for you and your audience.

Reading: How to create a website in localhost

Website Hosting for Beginners: What It Is and why you need it

In short, web hosting is a service that allows you to publish your website live on the Internet. A web host, also known as a hosting service provider, is a company that provides the tools you need to do this.

First and foremost, this includes a server. Servers store website files and Internet browsers can communicate with them to deliver your website pages to visitors. This is why hosting is such an important element when setting up a website – without hosting, you have no way of making your website public.

It’s important to note that there are two ways to make a website to host: (1) remote/public and (2) local.

A locally hosted website is stored on your own computer – your own server (this is also known as self-hosting), while an externally hosted website is stored on a provider’s server.

If If you already know how to host your website, you can now jump to further information:

👉 How to host a website on the web
👉 How to host your own Website Local

While you might want to forgo external hosting to save money, hosting your own website locally is usually not powerful enough for even a small business website. Your users will experience extremely slow loading times and your own resources will likely be short on resources.

Instead, local websites are typically used for testing and development or staging and are only visible to the website owner and/or developers. An externally hosted copy of the website is then made public to users, backed by a web hosting provider’s much more powerful server.

Local and external hosting are often used together. However, if you only need a private website for development, you may only need local hosting. Likewise, when a website is very small and simple, website owners can often forego a staging website and just use external hosting.

How to Host a Website on the Web (5 Important Considerations)

When hosting a website on the Internet, it all boils down to one important decision: which provider to choose. Below we have outlined five main aspects to consider when choosing web hosting service.

1. Determine the best type of hosting for your website

For WordPress users, there are five main types of hosting to consider:

Shared hosting (often the cheapest Hosting)
Virtual Private Server (VPS Hosting)
Dedicated Hosting
Cloud Hosting
Managed WordPress Hosting

Here is a quick overview of each hosting type and how they compare:

FeaturesShared HostingVirtual Private ServersDedicated ServersCloud HostingManaged WordPress Hosting Speed2-33-44-54-54-5 Stability4-54- 54-554 -5 Scalability13554 Customization Options3-45555 Price Range$2–$4$2–$20$80–$260$20–$100$4–$28 Best forBeginners starting their first siteMedium Traffic SitesHigh Traffic Sites (100,000+ visits)Any,ever by PlanMedium Traffic WordPress Sites Hosts to ConsiderBluehost // DreamHostInMotion Hosting // HostGatorInMotion HostingKinsta // A2 Hosting // WP En gineSiteGround // Bluehost

Everyone has their pros and cons. There is no one “best web hosting”, it all depends on your website needs. Very small websites can often do just fine with a shared hosting plan. However, the other types give your site plenty of room to grow and are likely to offer better performance, especially during periods of traffic spikes and longer uptime.

A WordPress-specific hosting plan can be very useful, so it takes a portion for you maintaining your website. It also usually offers tools or services that you would need for your WordPress site anyway, saving you additional purchases.

There are other niche types of web hosting that cater to different types of websites with customized tweaks the specifics of these websites. For example, if you want to run an e-commerce store, some providers offer optimized plans for that.

2. Explore additional features offered by different providers

In addition to hosting your website on one of their servers, many hosting providers – especially those with managed WordPress plans – offer useful features that you might want for your website wish.Some common ones are:

Domain name registration
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
SSL certificates
Security features such as. Firewalls or regular scans
Automated backups
Externally hosted staging areas
Email services
Website builders

WordPress hosting plans sometimes also come with access to premium themes, automated WordPress updates, and WordPress-related customer support. It’s definitely worth considering what additional features you need or want for your website.

3. Check out the customer support options offered by different providers

Customer support is a key element of any hosting service. Your relationship with your hosting provider is likely to be long-term, so it’s important that they’re able to provide you with any help you might need regarding your account, cPanel (Control Panel), server, or even WordPress itself .

4. Set a hosting budget and find a hosting plan that’s right for you

Hosting is an ongoing expense. Most providers require you to pay monthly fees, although some offer annual plans. Either way, it’s important to consider what you can afford on a regular basis.

There are many affordable hosting options out there. However, as we mentioned earlier, the cheaper options sometimes come with other issues. Web hosting is often a situation where you get what you pay for.

Every website’s budget is different, so we can’t decide exactly what type of plan is best for you. Our best recommendation is to look for budget plans that still offer good functionality and high performance scores.

5. Find out how to install WordPress on your provider’s server

Finally, it’s always a good idea to consider how to install WordPress – your content management system – on your new hosting account. While this may seem unimportant at first glance, your WordPress installation options can make a world of difference in the ease of setting up your website.

No matter which hosting provider you choose, you can always install WordPress manually . This includes accessing your server via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) using a client like FileZilla.

Some managed WordPress hosts also offer a one-click installation option to quickly install the software on your account can install . There are even plans with WordPress pre-installed, which is the easiest solution.

How to host your own website locally (2 methods)

There are several methods for hosting a website locally. Which one works best for you depends on the needs of your particular website. So let’s look at two popular options.

1. Build a site with a local web stack

A local web stack like XAMPP is software that provides several components needed for local development, including a web server. The main advantage of this method is that it gives you the most control over your website:

XAMPP web server software .

XAMPP also keeps your local website completely private and unavailable to other users. The downside is that it’s a bit tricky to set up. You’ll need to install XAMPP and manually install WordPress to get it working.

It’s also important to note that while you can use a XAMPP-hosted WordPress site to test plugins or if you practice coding, you can’t use it to create a real staging site. Due to differences in hardware configuration, features that work on a XAMPP WordPress installation may not work on a live WordPress site.

2. Sign up for a virtual sandbox environment

A much easier way to create a local WordPress site – and deploy your live site – is to use a virtual sandbox environment. These platforms, including Local by Flywheel, allow you to easily create local WordPress installations:

Local by Flywheel is completely free to use. All you have to do is sign up, download the app and start creating websites. However, you should make sure that you configure your settings so that your websites are not visible to search engines and their SEO crawlers.

Also remember that while your websites are hosted locally, you are still technically relying on a third-party resource. In the event that Flywheel stops supporting the platform, you’d have to find another solution (although there’s no indication that might happen any time soon).

Conclusion

This includes maintaining Note the differences between local and offsite hosting and your options for using them:

Local hosting involves using your computer as a server for your website and can be hosted over a local webstack such as z XAMPP or a virtual sandbox environment such as Local by Flywheel.
Offsite hosting (on the web) requires you to select a hosting provider and one of their web hosting plans. When making a decision, you should consider hosting types, features, customer support, price, and ease of installation. The hosts we recommend are Bluehost ($2.75/mo), SiteGround ($2.99/mo), and WP Engine ($20/mo – high-end host).

You Have questions about hosting a website? Ask them in the comments section below!

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