How does an HTML file on my computer can be uploaded to the Internet and accessed by someone on the other side of the world. Does it cost money?
In: Technology
An HTML page is delivered to users who request it from their web browser from a _web server_. That is software and hardware that runs the software that responds to IP address/domain requests like “www.reddit.com” and responds with an appropriate response – a bunch of text and/or data.
You have to pay for it somehow – you need bandwidth to delivery the file, you need a domain name from somewhere (your own, someone else’s), you need the hardware that runs the web server and so on. You can do this from you house over your internet connection (your agreement with your ISP may not allow this, but technically-speaking you can) from your computer if you want, but most will have a datacenter, use something like amazon web services or azure or a hosting provider or a service that hosts websites. There are lots of commercial options for supporting your desire to host a website.
It doesn’t really need to be uploaded anywhere. Your computer is also part of the internet, and you could host that page right on it. All that it requires is a webserver (which is software that can be had for free), the ability to serve content over port 80 (which the vast majority of people can do, barring ISP shenanigans. You’ll just need to open or forward the port on your router), and the willingness to keep a computer running 24/7 and paying for the resulting power bill, and bandwidth (mostly not a problem on small scales).
That said, if you’re not technically inclined I think paying somebody else is a better idea, because you need to run hardware 24/7, you need to take care of security, and your page will be down if the computer needs maintenance. You can easily pay somebody like Dreamhost [a couple bucks a month](https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/) for that.
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