SkyMagik Internet Services

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What is web hosting?

Web hosting (or webhosting) is a service offered to provide a website with a home. Just like many people rent apartments (and homes) in which to live, a website also needs a place to live. A computer server provides a home for a website (or multiple websites). These websites are usually implemented as files, which are provided to your web browser when you visit a website. The website name, such as www.skymagik.com, is the address. When this address is typed into a web browser, this will cause your personal computer to contact the website computer and receive one or more files to render the page that you see.

A website needs a server, physical security, a very fast connection to the Internet and tolerance to typical computer and environmental problems. The "tolerance" (also known as "fault tolerance") of a website can be measured by a server's "uptime." Just like your home needs to be livable at all times, websites also need safe homes where everything is highly available at all times. Sometimes you hear the word "redundancy" used along with "fault tolerance." This means that your website has more than one single point of failure. The more redundancy there is, the more likely a server or a website will remain "up" (in other words, no outages). During an outage, nobody will be able to use your website. Just like you never want to lose the use of your home, you never want a server outage.