hey peeps;
i would really love to know what knowledge is needed to be a web host. please dont discuss home servers, colocation, dedicated servers etc for now.
i want the discussion to be based on buying a reseller plan from someone else and of course setting up the website to sell the product. it is assumed that the skills needed in the creation of a basic (static) website has been acquired.

the discourse should take the following format: to set up a webhosting business, you will buy a reseller plan , get the software(how, which and maybe why ), and of course other stuff that need to be know like control panel, linux and windows , bandwidth, mysql and other stuff required in running it.

reference to other resources such as books, website to gather more knowledge would really help.

thanks

Yeah dual, wonderful resource. How about the technical aspect

The technical aspect will have to be with you managing your sites with a web application like Webhost Manager (WHM).

You really dont have much to do, technically as a reseller.
The technical burden is on the administrator(s) of the server you reseller account is running on.

is it that you just get the script from the reseller host, and copy paste into your page for stuffs like customer login etc

You may want to install a billing system on your site that takes care of Customer management, Customer support and billing (invoice & receipt generation).
This will, in most cases not be provided by your host. You will have to get a license for the script and install by yourself.

Examples of billing systems are:

WHMCS (license is 18 usd per month)
ClientExec (license is 15 usd per month)
WHMAutopilot (cant remember how much this one costs)


The above will only apply if you want to set up your reseller account to host sites for the general public. If it is an in-house thing for just your sites and sites for your clients you wont need all that.

thanks dual. but why install a billing system if the customers would not be paying online. or is that not what that billing system means/does.

can i get an ebook/reference to explain stuffs like DNS, name servers, domain name transfer, pointing name to server and those little stuff i have been hearing. i dont really understand all those concepts.

The billing system also handles offline payment methods like bank transfer and it's a time saver. saves you all the stress of managing client transactions too. imagine have a client base of 3000 accounts and you dont have a system to let u know when a client's subscription is expiring.


In webhosting 2 things are involved.
Domain Registration and Hosting.

Say you want to build a house. You will need a blueprint for the house, right? the architect does that for you. now you will need where to build that house. You go on and hire a piece of land from a landlord. Ok, now u've gotten the land, but how do people know where this land is? you then get an address (which will consist of the number and street name).

Now you have a land you can build on and people know where your house will be and can easily drive down there.

The house is your website
The architect is you
The land and the whole process of getting the land is webhosting
The whole process of getting an address for that land is domain registration.
The landlord is your host provider.

Now, how everyone knows that the address of the land is tied to that land is through nameservers.


So you need to get a domain, then get a host. Associating that domain with that host is what is meant by pointing the domain to a nameserver.
Could go on but my brain and fingers are aching. I'm doing like 500 words per second 

Hope this helps though.

yeah get that. every host has name server.so when you buy/register a domain name, you point it through the control panel of the registrar to your nameservers(i thik also called DNS).

what is now the difference between domain transfer and pointing to nameserver?

so as a host you must write a login script through which clients will log into the control panel provided by the parent host.

Talking about domain transfer. Domain registration is done by authorized registrars.
So domain transfer means transfer the domain from one registrar to another.

You know some place in ph so this should help. Say you have obio-akpor LGA and Emouha LGA. A particular place is within the jurisdiction of Obio Akpor. Now for some weird reasons, the state governement decides to shift that jurisdiction of that place to Emouha LGA.
The state governement is in full control.

Now ICANN is like that state government and they control naming on the internet. They have authorized registrars under them.

yeah get that, so in essence domain transfer is out of it, but why should one want to transfer a domain name cos i dont see the need for now.

host here refers to the last seller/retailer

the script for the "login with userame and password to the control panel" on a host's site is usually generated/written by the host,right? but the control panel does not reside on the host's site, right? it resides wth the parent company/server owners, right? so what the host does is to provide a sort of access for the end users to access the parent company's server,right?

lanbaba:

the script for the "login with userame and password to the control panel" on a host's site is usually generated/written by the host,right? but the control panel does not reside on the host's site, right? it resides wth the parent company/server owners, right? so what the host does is to provide a sort of access for the end users to access the parent company's server,right?

Yes
The Webhost Manager resides on the dedicated server(s) of the host. Resellers use the same Webhost manager on that server.


People do domain transfer for different reasons. Just like people change network carriers for different reasons.
See this
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-373227.0.html