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What Is A Server?

The first thing a start-up web builder must know, is where everything is. You have your computer and then someone else has another computer called the server computer. To have a website, you must rent space on that server computer. That's where your website will exist - not on your computer, but rather on your server's computer.

A server is a computer in an Internet host facility.

Any website operates from, and is on, a server somewhere in the world. That server is just another computer, but most people's websites are on servers that are in shared hosting facilities.

An Internet host facility is a building containing many computers, all of them connected to the Internet. The server computers run server software that presents your website to any visitor that goes to your domain name. That host facility is usually a big warehouse full of computers and air conditioning systems, and a few harried individuals who run around trying to keep the computers working.

The strange thing about most of our websites is that we've never physically been there. We go there in our web browsers and our FTP programs (which will be explained later) and work on our sites. But very few website owners ever walk into the room where the actual computer is that hosts and runs our websites.

For example, you could be in your office or home in Texas and your website could be in lower Manhattan. It doesn't matter where it is. But the key element when you work on your website is that you must communicate between your computer and the server computer.

When you work on your site you commonly have to move files from your computer to the server computer. If you write an article, you have to upload - that is, move those words in that text file - from your computer to the server.

Then when people go to your website, they will in fact be going to that server computer to read your article. Neither one of you has to know where the physical server is. So it's that communication link between your computer and the server computer that is the important link in your ability to build and maintain a website.

One of the fundamental concepts here is that you upload files from your computer to the server computer. You can also download files from the server computer to your computer. You commonly do that with what's called an FTP program.

FTP means file transfer protocol. It just means a program that knows how to move files from one place to the other. For more on FTP and web building, Website-DoItYourself will take you step by step through the process.

Creating a website or repairing a website that already exists, you have to be able to upload and download files; to modify them on your computer; and to upload them to the server computer.