Useful for:
- People who want a broad understanding of how websites are hosted
Not relevant for:
- People needing detailed technical information
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Once you have registered a domain name you need to be able to use it to display your web site. If you want to know more about domain names see our articles tagged with domains. To use your domain to create a website you need to have a web server.
There are many types of web server but the two most common are Apache and Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS). At the basic level these are just programs that run on a computer (or server) that is permanently connected to the Internet. Apache can be run on either Linux or Windows Servers, IIS is only available for Windows. In nearly all cases though Apache is run on Linux as it is designed to be fully compatible with the Linux Operating System (OS). As at November 2009 Apache accounted for about 55.32% and IIS 18.98% of all the web servers on the Internet (see news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/11/10/november_2009_web_server_survey.html).
Once you have a web server you will need to load your content on it. Usually you won’t have direct access to the sever so this is done using File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a way of connecting your computer to another one and enabling you to transfer files a bit like using Windows Explorer or Nautilus. Most FTP clients allow you to drag files and just drop them onto the remote folder. Watch out for the folder structure on the web server. Often there will be a specific public folder in which you put the content for your website and other folders where you put files that you want the web server to be able to access but not the public
If you are interested in having a domain hosted then please look at our prices at southcot.co.uk/Products/Hosting.php if you need a domain first then have a look at our domain pricing at southcot.co.uk/Products/Domains.php.