Launching a website is an exciting step for every business owner. Before your site goes live, it’s crucial to understand the foundations that make it accessible and secure for visitors around the world. Website hosting might seem complex at first. There is a collection of interconnected components that each serve a specific role in keeping your website available on the internet. Each part works behind the scenes to ensure that when someone types your site’s address into their browser, they’re greeted by a fast, reliable, and safe experience.
Let’s break down what each component does, why it matters, and how it fits into the bigger picture—empowering you to make informed decisions as you bring your website to life. Whether you’re a complete beginner working on your first website or an established business owner looking to improve your website’s performance, this guide will give you a clear understanding on what it takes to host and maintain your WordPress website.
Components of Website Hosting
1. Domain Name
- Definition: This is your website’s unique address on the internet (e.g., www.example.com). No two websites can have the same domain name.
- Purpose: Allows users to find and access your website online.
2. DNS (Domain Name System)
- Definition: The system that translates your human-readable domain name into an IP address that computers understand.
- Purpose: Directs internet traffic to the correct physical server where your website files are stored.
3. Web Hosting Server
- Definition: The physical or cloud server where your website files and data reside.
- Purpose: Responds to requests from visitors’ web browsers, delivering your site’s content to them.
- Hosting Types: Common options include shared hosting, VPS (virtual private server), dedicated server, and cloud hosting. The type affects performance, capacity, and cost
4. Website Files/Content
- Definition: All code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), images, text, videos, and databases that make up your site.
- Purpose: The web server stores these files and delivers them to users upon request.
5. Database Server
- Description: A system handles requests from websites or applications to store, retrieve, and update data efficiently.
- Purpose: Most dynamic websites (like those built with WordPress) store content and user data in a database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.
6. Security Features
- Description: All the measures and technologies put in place to protect a website, its data, and its underlying server from unauthorized access, cyberattacks, or data loss.
- Purpose: Encrypt data and build trust with browsers and users with an SSL certificate. Take additional security precautions with firewalls that will prevent unauthorized access and manage web traffic securely.
WordPress Website Maintenance
Once you launch your new website, the work isn’t finished. The internet is constantly evolving — new technologies, devices and softwares are introduced all the time. Your website needs to keep up in order to stay your brand’s strongest asset instead of your biggest obstacle to overcome. Website maintenance refers to the ongoing process of keeping your website updated, secure and running smoothly for visitors. Website maintenance can be broken down into two main categories:
Technological Core Maintenance
This refers to all of the tasks related to keeping your WordPress website running smoothly from a technological standpoint. This includes:
- WordPress Updates: Ensuring the website is using the latest version of WordPress CMS software
- PHP Updates: Updating the site files to use the latest versions of PHP – the programming language WordPress is built on
- Security Patches: Keeping your website fully secure with various security patches, protocols and software updates
- WordPress Theme Updates: Installing a newer version of your website’s theme to ensure it remains secure, compatible, and feature-rich.
- Plugin Updates: Installing the latest versions of every plugin the WordPress website uses to ensure features remain compatible with other software used
These core WordPress website maintenance tasks are required in a timely manner to ensure your website stays accessible on the internet and usable to its intended purposes. All other website edits and maintenance requests are related to content, design and expansion. They may not be technically required to keep the site running, but could be needed for other reasons.
Website Experience and Expansion Maintenance
Aside from the technical updates, your brand will want to ensure your site’s content, design, pages and features remain valuable for SEO and engaging for your target audience. These edits are user-experienced and front-end focused, which can include:
- Content Updates: Adding, editing or re-arranging pages in a way that better serves relevant content to the intended audience
- Design Changes: Changing page layouts, media and global visual elements to maintain engagement across all devices
- SEO: Optimizing your website to increase visibility and position in search results.
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that allows users to create, manage, and publish websites without complex coding skills. Possibilities are endless; the website you launch with doesn’t have to stay that way forever. You should monitor your website analytics regularly to determine what future changes will help boost your visibility online and make the best ROI from your website.
As a full-service marketing agency with over 20 years of experience, Katava Marketing has helped countless businesses grow their online presence with high-performing websites designed with target audiences in mind. We offer packages for every online service your business needs from website development, hosting, SEO and more. Katava Marketing is the all-in-one solution for your website and marketing needs so you can get back to what’s most important: your customers. View our website hosting packages to get started with Katava Marketing.
