Getting Started - The Basics.

If you never had a web site before and do not understand some of the terminology, here are some "newbie" basics that will help you out. Besides authoring your web site, two things you will need are a domain and a host.

What is a domain? Using non-technical language, imagine that the Internet is the same as a big city. You have a store in the city. People are not going to find your store unless you have a unique address that they can find. In the Internet world, the "address" (or the unique identity) of your web site is called a "domain." These domains have numerical addresses (IP addresses) such as 207.309.234.001. Remembering the numbers is difficult, so you register a unique name such as "www.yourcompany.com" that is assigned to the IP address.

How do I get a domain? To get your own unique domain name, you need to run a search to see if it is available. Once you find a domain name that suits you, for a small fee, you register the domain name on an annual or longer basis. You can search the availability of domain names and register your domain at www.GoDaddy.com . GoDaddy.com offers some of the most affordable domain registrations and other services online. Another benefit is GoDaddy.com 's online control panel, which allows you to easily change the nameservers of your host and make other account changes without having to call your registrar. After using several different registrars, we highly recommend www.GoDaddy.com because of the great customer support, pricing, and ease of use.

What is a host? In order for people to view your web site when they type your domain name into their browser, you must put your web site on a "host." Going back to the store analogy, your "store" is where you display and possibly warehouse your inventory. In the Internet world, your inventory is described in electronic files that are viewable in a web browser. You need a "host" so that these electronic files can be viewed on the Internet. On the back end, your host has a "nameserver" that your domain points to (this is the physical location of "your space" on the computer that holds your web file pages and serves them out to web browsers upon request). In order for people to view your web site, they type your domain name into their browser, which then points to your web site on a server. (Many new web site owners are concerned about the storage capacity and speed of their personal computers when they decide to go online. The size of your personal computer's storage has nothing to do with the host, which is on a server (a computer) that is different from your computer. Likewise, your computer's processing speed has nothing to do with your web site. The server can be anywhere. If you live in northeast Arizona, you can have a server in New York or Houston. It makes no difference in terms of what people will see on the Internet.)

How much space should my host provide? In the physical world, your store might be 1000 square feet, or it might be 10,000 square feet. The bigger your store, the more you can put in it. The same goes with hosts. The larger the hosting service, the more electronic files you can store. Many "newbies" think that they need a huge, multi-gigabyte host for their web sites. For the most part, this is unnecessary. A 20-page site will probably use less than 100 megabytes of space.

If you take a look at a 3.5" floppy disk (what fits in your "A" drive on your computer), you'll see that it stores 1.44 MB. Your writable CDs store around 700 MBs. This should give you an idea about how much hosting space that you need.

Do I just type my web page? How does this work? Without getting too technical, the electronic files that make up your web site are written in a code called "HTML" so that they are viewable on the Internet. Images are generally files in a .gif or .jpeg format. There are many other programming languages, such as PHP, cgi (perl), java, javascript, XML and more. At a bare minimum, you should select a host that permits these programming languages and offers a mySQL database. Our hosting packages offer all of these options, plus much more. You can also find web authoring tools in our "Do It Yourself" section. [Back to the navigation menu]

If you want to create your own web site, there are many free hosts that you can experiment with before moving to a paid host with your own domain name. Due to security issues, many of the free hosts do not give you access to mySQL or other databases, cgi-bins, and the like. However, they are great to use for temporary or experimental sites. Search for a free host here (type, using the quotes, "free web hosting" - the results will open in a new window):