Building blocks for a website hosting
At a very high level — To build a hosted website, you will need a website (no surprise here), register a domain name, manage the DNS settings for the domain, and host the website either yourself or with a hosting service provider.
Here is a high-level post that talks about the setup of a typical website.
Domain registration, DNS management, and Web hosting are three separate services/functions. There is a whole gamut of providers specializing in one or more of these services, such as ² :
- Domain name registrars — Google domains, Namecheap, GoDaddy, Enom, DynaDot, Siteground, etc.
- Web hosting — GoDaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator, DreamHost, WP Engine, etc.
- DNS management — Akamai Edge, Cloudflare, Azure, No-IP, Alibaba Cloud DNS, Google Cloud DNS, Verisign Managed DNS, Oracle Cloud DNS, etc.
From a service packaging point of view, we often see three popular scenarios in the industry :
- A la carte — essentially using a different provider for each service, i.e., purchasing the domain from one company, web hosting¹ service from another company, and DNS management via a separate company.
- Two in one — e.g., purchase the domain and manage the DNS via the same company (e.g., GoDaddy) but host the website through a different provider.
- All in one — e.g., purchase the domain, manage the DNS and host the website through a single provider like GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc.
Let’s look at specifics for one of the commonly used scenarios, the “two in one bundle”.
Hypothetically assume you want to buy (register/reserve) the domain main “testmydomain.com”. You can buy it via a registrar or a reseller. Let’s say you go to a Registrar like GoDaddy.
GoDaddy will check if the domain is available and then lease the “testmydomain.com” to you for some duration (month/year/etc.) for some monthly/yearly fee. Once the registrar reserves the domain, it should appear under the DNS hierarchy something like below.
At this point, the management of DNS for “testmydomain.com” is under GoDaddy. In the “DNS Management” section of the GoDaddy platform, we point “testmydomain.com” DNS record GoDaddy DNS records.
Next, you create your website and then upload it to a web hosting service provider, thus, saving from the hassle of managing the site.
After hosting the website, you go into the DNS management section of the hosting provider’s platform and point the NS record of your domain to the NS record of the web hosting provider.
And just like that, you have a working website ready for your users.
PRO TIP — In the first scenario above (a la carte), the NS records of the domain should point to the NS record of the DNS management provider’s nameserver. The A record should point to the web hosting server’s IP address. You can change these settings from the control panel of the registrar’s (domain provider) portal².
I hope you find this article helpful and stay tuned for my next blog post.
Until then!
Happy Learning 😎
References :
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-web-hosting-services
