
There are 2 entities you require in order to host a website. The first one is a domain name that will exhibit your web page when you write it in a web browser, and the other one is a web hosting account, which is fundamentally the disk storage space on a server where the website files will be situated, plus a few more features that come with it. The domains and the web hosting package are two similar, yet different services, and you require them both to have an operational online portal.
A domain name is the alpha-numeric combination that you will select to be the address for the web portal: my-best-domain.com, for instance. A domain can be up to 64 characters long and it includes 2 parts – a top-level domain name (TLD) and a second-level domain name (SLD). In the abovementioned example, my-best-domain is the second-level domain name, and .com is the Top-Level Domain. While you can select the SLD of the domain to be anything that is available for registration, there is a certain number of TLDs to choose from. The Top-Level Domains can be generic (gTLDs) or country-code (ccTLDs), and can be registered for a certain interval of time between one and 10 yrs. They may have other specifications in relation to the registrant.
As the domain is just a name and nothing more than that, you demand a site hosting package where you have to host it. In this way, when you write it in a browser, it will open the web site files that you have in the account, in other words it will exhibit your online portal. You can have a domain name registered with a particular company and obtain the hosting services from another, although lots of hosting providers offer both services and it is more time-saving to manage all services from one webspace hosting Control Panel user interface. Either way, because the domain name registration and the web hosting plan are different services, you have to point the domain name to the hosting server where it will be added as hosted. To do that, you need to alter a specific setting, or record, of the domain name - the so-called name server records. Each hosting corporation has at least 2 name servers - ns1.webhostingfirm.net and ns2. webhostingfirm.net, for instance. The web site hosting CP that you use for your domain name gives you the option to alter the nameservers and point the domain to one web host or another.
Once the domain name is pointed to a concrete domain hosting company and is added to their servers, you will obtain various online services. The most important one is that the website files that you accommodate on the web hosting server will now be available online when you type your domain in a web browser. You will also be able to set up e-mailbox accounts such as name@my-best-domain.com and make use of webmail or a mail client to handle them. Whether you manage a personal or a corporate web page, being available online and being allowed to use electronic mails with your domain name are the two most pivotal things that come with a web site hosting account. In case you manage a business site – it will single out your business before your website visitors or clients. That is why you require a stable hosting company that will supply a fast and steady web hosting solution.
Other online services that you receive by hosting a domain are: FTP access to upload and download files easily, domain name forwarding, email auto-responders and electronic mailing lists, and the option to set up and edit given domain name records from your hosting CP. The availability of these functionalities may vary depending on the host, but reliable web hosting suppliers such as 'Lonex', for example, provide all of the abovementioned features with their web hosting accounts, outstripping their rivals.