What is a website host, and why do you have to pay hosting fees for your website? Website hosting is essentially renting a home on the Internet Freeway. The files used to build your website need a place to live on the Internet, so we rent lodging from a website "host." Just as some people prefer a one-bedroom apartment to a 4 bedroom house, depending on what functionality your site may need (streaming media files, shopping carts, etc.), we select a host and service package that offers the technologies to meet your site needs.

Your actual Internet Freeway address provided by the host is a long series of numbers called your IP address. It comes in a form similar to "123.4.56.789". Since that series of numbers and dots is difficult to remember, we use domain names, e.g. www.yourname.com. When you purchase your domain name and your web hosting, your webmaster will configure the nameservers. Those nameservers are big databases that associate your domain name to your IP address, allowing you to advertise your website address as www.yourname.com instead of 123.4.56.789.

You can read more about domain names here.