Explain Web Hosting Please!

[zione1]

This is my problem. We've got a web site at work. Nothing fancy, we hired some guy about 3 yrs. ago to come in and create a web site for us. All my boss wanted was basically a web site just to advertise what we do. The guy who set it up also installed Frontpage on one of the machines at work so if I wanted to make any changes I would just launch Frontpage click on root web and type in user name and password and I would make changes at the site. Well the site hasn't been updated in about 1.5 years because the computer has since been formatted and reloaded and I don't know how to setup Frontpage so that I can type in my username and password and gain access to our site. Can someone help?

Also, can someone explain the steps involved when creating a site? I know how to create the site but how do you get it out on the web? I know there are web hosting services but how do they work? Do you create your site and email it or ftp it to them? I've always been confused by this...

Thanks

[mairving]

Most of the time you create your site and ftp, not email, it to the host. Some html editors like Frontpage, Dreamweaver and Homesite allow you to edit your pages on your site thus avoiding the upload process.

A host is someone with usually a bunch of servers sitting around doing nothing but serving up web pages. When you have a site up on the web, you basically have a very large network. With so many people on this network, people are assigned different IP addresses and a domain name to go along with them. This is where the host comes in (or you if you had the skills to setup your own webserver). The host will register your domain name and tie it to an IP address. Of course, they also do things like keep intruders out and things from crashing and the like. The rely on volume to make money. For instance, they may charge you $10 a month but have several hundred or several thousand people like you which is how they make money.

With most sites, your files will reside in a public_html directory. When someone clicks on yoursite.com , an index file will load your home page and you are directed to the links on that page.

That is a very brief way of the way things work.