Web hosting refers to the service that involves displaying your Web site onto the Internet through a high-speed computer server that is also connected to the Internet. Your Web site pages would be stored on a portion of the servers disk space, always ready for another computer to ask for those pages to be delivered to its browser via the Internet.
How does this all happen? This is accomplished with a combination of IP adresses and domain names (www.yourname.com) that directly relates to your server space, much like your street address locates your home, so that anyone around the World can access your Web pages simply by typing your domain name into their browser. Setting up your domain name to point to the correct server and disk space is also part of the service offered by your Web host.
While all Web hosting companies are offering a similar end result, disk space on a server connected to the Internet, they differentiate themselves from the competition based on plan pricing, customer service, amount of disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, server uptime and a variety of value added services like multi-media and e-commerce capabilities. To learn more about the Terminology commonly used by Web hosting companies, read Understanding Web Hosting Terminology.
