The Internet for Beginners

Host or Server?

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Web designers.
These are the people arranging your photographs in a document that a web server can understand. Ie they make web sites. Actually web designers can deliver some really complicated work but by the time we're looking at eccomerce sites we're more likely to use the title "programmer" rather than "designer".

Web host or web server.
This is the computer your web site is stored on for global visibility. These are not necessarily powerful computers but they are well located on the internet. They need to be able respond to requests to display web pages promptly so you will find them in capital cites or large commercial areas where there is a lot of internet activity and global internet cable connections. This follows the same rationale as building a large warehouse next to a motorway rather than half way up a mountain. You need to know three things about your web server – where it is, which is the same as its name: www.myfirm.pk and a user name and password that will allow you to modify the files on it.

Host or server
Although this jargon is misused even among competent technical people there is a distinction between the “Host” consequentially “Hosting” and Server ditto “Serving”. A host is a computer on the Internet. A Server is a piece of software that runs on a Host.

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