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Explain / Hosting

What is hosting?

The computer in a data centre that holds your site’s files and hands them to anyone who types your address. Free plans exist for small sites.

In plain English

Hosting is just a computer somewhere, in a data centre you'll never see, holding your website's files and handing them over whenever someone types your address. That's genuinely it. You type the address, the hosting computer sends the files, your browser puts them on screen. Static sites are easy to host. Sites with a back-end need a bit more, but services like Cloudflare Pages, Netlify and Vercel sort most of that out for you, and give you a free address to start.

A worked example

You push the café's files to GitHub. Cloudflare Pages (or Netlify, or Vercel, take your pick) is watching that repository. Files change, it redeploys automatically, no faffing about. Visitors get a free address to begin with, something like mycafe.pages.dev. It's live. Later on you point mycafe.com at it through the same dashboard, and now the real domain shows the real site. That hosting computer just keeps sitting there, serving the files, day and night, without you thinking about it once.

Getting set up

Sign up for a free account, Cloudflare, GitHub, Netlify, Vercel, no card needed for Cloudflare or GitHub. Connect the GitHub repository, pick the branch, done. Site's live. Adding a custom domain happens in the same dashboard, and you point your domain registrar at it from there.

The usual mix-up

People think hosting and the domain are the same thing. They're not. Hosting is the computer with your files sat on it. The domain is just the address people type to find it. You buy one from a registrar, then point it at the hosting.

Where you’ll use it

Also comes up in: build me a website as a photographer, build me a website as an admin.

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