Web hosting is like a home for your website. It provides a place to store all of your sites important files and data media files, web apps, PHP files, HTML, text and more. Without hosting, your sites traffic could be slowed down, and you could see lower load times.
I recommend hosting with Namecheap. While I dont love the name, the company isnt hard to get in contact with. They have cheap plans (7.95 per month) that allow you to host a site and have access to them all over the world. Of course, you can also go the whole hog and pay for an unlimited plan and go all-in, or you can opt for a limited plan (in my opinion, a better plan is simply going to be available if you dont have the patience to wait on hold with your ISP).
Setting up your own web hosting
Once you have decided on a plan that is right for you, all you need to do is sign up for your account and select the server that you want to host. All of the features that you can use are available on all the supported hosts, and its really up to you which features you like.
Now that you have chosen a host, you need to go ahead and create your site. This is where things can get tricky. After signing up, you have an option to create a new, blank site or you can click on the URL that you chose from your homepage. If you want to make your web page specific to your company's website, then it might be beneficial to put it into a custom domain. In that case, all that you need to do is register your domain name with your hosting provider, since there are different options such as knownhost dedicated servers which are a perfect option for many businesses. This will allow you to have an exact link to your page so that you can easily share it with all of your clients.
Once you set up your site, click on the welcome screen that will automatically appear when you arrive. On the page that appears, you can do things like upload images, set up any marketing or social media buttons, choose whether to host email newsletters, log in or create a new account, set up some basic options for users, configure your log in details, set up your password and finally enter your payment information. You might want to check out this guide on Creating your first website.
Once you are done with the configuration of your site, click the New site button in the top left corner. The welcome screen will disappear and will be replaced with a screen showing a download location for the files that you have uploaded and are in the process of uploading. Click the "Add Files" button to add all of your uploaded files.
You can add any kind of file that you need to your site. Things like images, CSS, and PDF files are among the most common files that people upload to their site. Other popular file types are HTML, plain text, and PHP files.
You are free to add or remove any kind of data from your site, and you should make sure to not delete any of the files that you have uploaded. If you get confused about the different ways to upload files, be sure to check out this guide on Uploading Files to a WordPress Site.
Once you have selected your site, you have a few options. You can customize the look and feel of your site, or set up some add-ons for your site.
