When you type a domain into your browser and press Enter, a surprising amount happens in the few hundred milliseconds before the page appears. Most of it is invisible, but every step depends on services working together — and understanding those steps makes it much easier to reason about what a web host is and what it is not.

1. The browser asks: where is this site?

Computers don't speak in domain names. They speak in IP addresses. So the first job is translation. Your browser asks a DNS resolver — usually one run by your internet provider, or a public resolver like 1.1.1.1 — for the IP address associated with the domain. The resolver may already have the answer cached; if not, it follows a chain of DNS servers up to the authoritative nameservers for the domain, which Lunava manages on your behalf when you register a domain with us.

2. A secure connection is negotiated

Once the browser has an IP address, it opens a TCP connection to the server and immediately begins a TLS handshake. TLS is what gives you the padlock icon in the address bar. During the handshake the server presents an SSL certificate — a signed statement from a trusted certificate authority that "yes, this server is authorised to speak for this domain." Every Lunava hosting plan includes a free SSL certificate, installed and renewed automatically.

3. The server receives the request

With the secure channel in place, the browser sends an HTTP request: "GET /about, please." The web server — the actual software running on the host, usually nginx or Apache — decides what to do with that request. For a static file, it reads the file from disk and streams it back. For a dynamic page (WordPress, for example), it hands the request to a PHP process, which runs code, queries a database, and assembles a response.

4. What "hosting" really means

A web host is the combination of the server, the network it sits on, the operating system, the web server software, the runtime (PHP, Python, Node), the database, the backup system, and the tooling that ties them all together. When you buy a hosting plan, you are not really buying a pile of disk and RAM — you are buying the ongoing operation of all of these moving parts, with someone else responsible for keeping them working.

That is also why comparing plans on raw spec sheets alone rarely tells the whole story. Storage and bandwidth matter, but so does isolation (can another customer's busy site affect yours?), backup retention, SSL automation, support responsiveness, and the honesty of the renewal price.

5. How Lunava fits in

Lunava runs the full stack for you. We operate the servers, install and renew SSL certificates, take daily off-site backups, and handle the DNS records for domains registered through us. Every change — from a DNS tweak to an invoice payment — triggers a transactional email to the address on your account, so you have a durable record of what happened and when. You can always browse the current state of your services from the client area.

If you're just starting out, the Basic plan is a sensible place to begin. You can upgrade to Standard or Business at any time without migrating data.