Hosting a Webserver and Money
Programming · Apr 25th, 2021
If you think about it, the internet is just computers which are connected to each other. The computers which make out the world wide web (www), are webservers. With a program called a browser (like the window you are using at this very moment to read this blogpost), you can request files from a webserver, which are then displayed in the browser.
So, if you want to make a website, you need a webserver. This webserver contains all files which build up your website. You will most likely use a hosting service for this, because they have the resources to run a server 24/7. I chose GoDaddy, for no particular reason. I have not tested any other hosts, so I can’t give an opinion if this is the best or if others are better. It was literally my first choice, and because I am satisfied at the moment, I don’t plan on changing my host.
Once you sign up to a hosting service, you can get yourself a domain. The domain is pretty much just the address of your website. It’s a bit more complicated than this, but for now you only need to understand that the domain is nothing more than just the address. For example, the domain of my blog is rismosch.com. The domain of Googles search engine is google.com. It’s literally that easy.
Domains aren’t free, but generally they don’t cost the world. There is a market for them, so different domains cost different amounts. There are also other things you might need, that also need to be paid. These things include, but may not be limited to: Domain Protection, Email service and the hosting itself. The money adds up and you should consider the cost.
Another thing you should seriously consider, is buying an SSL certificate. Any time your browser requests files, it uses HTTP (short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol). Problem with that is, it is not encrypted. This means, if anyone decides to sit between your webserver and the user’s browser, they can read ALL the data plainly. This is a huge security issue for user data, especially password and other sensible information that might be interchanged. With an SSL certificate, the data is encrypted, so anyone trying to read the data, can’t, because for them it’s just gibberish. HTTP connections which use SSL are is simply called HTTPS. This SSL certificate, also costs money.
All these things are being paid annually. In my case, I need to pay every 2 years.
All in all, my costs add up to about 330€ per 2 years.
I am just throwing this number out there, so you get an idea of how much it costs to run a website. If this is worth it for you, I can’t tell you, you need to decide that for yourself. If you run a website you need to pay money, but you have complete freedom on whatever you want to show to the world.
If it is worth it for you and you are still interested, we can finally talk about something more exciting! Paying for the hosting is actually the easy stuff, now you need to design and actually code the website.
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