What is a web server?
A web server is a number of powerful computers known as servers put together and placed in an air conditioned location which is called a data centre. These servers are connected to high speed internet connections that are relatively fault tolerant.
Web servers are powerful enough to handle thousands of requests in a second and return the desired information quickly. This lets the visitor of a website access the information that he is looking for in a very short time.
Uptime is the measure of how long a server in online or operative in a set period such as a month, week or year. It is certainly no kids play to keep these severs online. A lot of web hosting companies will tell you that their servers have 99.9% uptime. In other words they are saying that 99.9% of the times in a month their servers are working uninterrupted which means that the websites on their servers will also be functional 99.9% of the time.
There are different types of servers like the dedicated server, database server, load balancing server and others. If you are new to websites, go for fully managed shared web hosting. This means that you will not have to bother to maintain the server the web hosting company will do it for you and the other sites on their server. This is the best and most cost effective solution for a beginner.