2. What are Web Servers?
Web Servers are computers that have been set up by a hosting company, usually in a facility called a data center. The purpose is to store websites until someone wants to visit them, and then to quickly respond to the visitor’s browser with the site’s content. How many websites a server can comfortably host depends on a wide variety of factors, including server hardware and how popular the websites are. Even the most expensive server hardware is not going to be very useful without the software to actually get things done. The key software programs of a web server are also themselves called servers or Daemons.
Most servers used for web hosting have at least these kinds of software servers running at all times :
- An HTTP or a Web Server (to provide the website)
- An FTP server (for uploading files)
- An Email server
- A Database server (for storing information essential to the operation of a website)