What is website hosting and domain?
A practical answer on hosting and domain, written from projects I have actually shipped rather than from a spec sheet.
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A domain name is your website's address, while hosting is the physical server space where your website's files are stored.
In More Detail
The connection between the two is DNS. Records at your registrar point the name at your host's servers, and each record has a time-to-live that says how long resolvers may cache it — which is why a change can appear instantly for you and an hour later for someone else. Lowering that value before a planned move makes the switch far less disruptive.
Two things go wrong reliably. A domain lapses because the renewal notice went to an address nobody reads, and recovering it after expiry is a race. And email breaks during a hosting move, because the records authorising who may send mail for your domain are separate from the ones pointing at your website — moving the site without carrying those across sends your mail to spam folders. Both are avoidable with a checklist.
What This Means For Your Project
Buy your domain from a reputable registrar under your own name and account — not through a developer's account — so you always retain ownership regardless of who built the site.
If this came up while you were scoping a project: the services page lists what I build, pricing publishes real starting figures, how I work covers cadence and timezone overlap, and the case studies show the stack and timeline on eight real projects. Unfamiliar term? Try the glossary.
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