I was helping a friend last night. I decided to grab an Internet domain name for him and put together a quick-and-dirty website, just to get him going. I am not much of a web master, at all. It is, more or less, a hobby for me. I do it to relax. I spend a minimum of cash on this hobby. Believe me, hobbies can be much more expensive.
While putting the pieces together for this guy's "face to the world", I started wondering how many people don't realize how easy it is to put up a website. Cheap too! A website gives your person, place or thing a nice bit of polish, as I'm sure anyone will agree.
By the same token, I can picture the simplicity of a simple website eluding the average Joe/Josephine, who just got over being befuddled by technology, in general. So here is a not-so-in-depth description of the basic parts and how they work together.
There are a lot of all-in-one package sites like Go-Daddy, etc. out there. They offer packages that include free domain names (for a year), hosting, email and everything else in one package. I don't use these solutions because retaining tight control of your domain name is complicated when you want to move to another host. These package systems have their convieniences, but I let them keep their free domain name for the sake of keeping all my domain registrations in one place. This article will describe the individual parts and their relationship.
GET A DOMAIN NAME
The first thing you need is a domain name. You get one from a registrar. I use 000domains.com. Register.com is another popular one. What happens here, is that you choose an available domain name and then pay a yearly fee for that domain name to belong to you. That's all you get from the registrar.
GET A WEB HOSTING SERVICE
Now you have to find a web host. This is a guy with a lot of servers out there who will rent you the disk space, bandwidth (on which, your pages travel to your visitors), email addresses, etc. for a monthly/yearly fee. Pricing for web hosting is all over the place. It all depends on how naive the customer is. If you are paying as much as $10. a month, you better be getting a lot more features than I know how to use!
Tip: When shopping hosts, try to take a look at the Control Panel offered by the hosting service. They may have a live demo of the control panel for you to look at on their sales page. The Control Panel is where you do all your stuff, like create email accounts, add domains, install scripts, etc. c-Panel is a good Control Panel. If you have a choice, go with a host that has c-Panel
CONFIGURE YOUR DOMAIN TO "BE FOUND"
Now you have a domain name and a place to put it, so to speak. Next, we have to let the Internet know that your domain name can be found at the server space you just rented. Log into your account at the registrar and specify nameservers for your domain. The Internet knows where you just registered your domain. It goes there to learn which hosting service (their servers - nameservers, to be exact) is servicing your domain. Then, all that propagates out to all the routers in the Internet, so your domain name can be found. That propagation, today, takes only minutes, where it used to take a day or so.
BUILD YOUR PAGES
This may seem like a daunting task to many. Its really not a big deal. Many web hosting services come with wizard-type site building scripts. Many installations of Microsoft Office Professional come with Microsoft Front Page. I like using Dreamweaver. Its expensive. The CoffeeCup HTML Editor does just as good a job, at a fraction of the price you can download an eval here. Just remember to use columns to contain your blocks of type- 'nuff said!
Now you are all set to create your own stuff for your website. Discussion Boards, Email Accounts, FTP Accounts, Classified Ads, Newsletter sign-ups, Blog scripts, Shopping Carts. There are so many scripts out there (many provided for free by the hosting service) that do anything from deliver the headlines from your site, to reporting how many days ago you quit smoking. If you didn't know why in the world you would ever want a real website, the list of possible features for your site can be very long, indeed.
Another Tip: Many of these scripts are (beautifully) self-installing PHP scripts that use MySQL databases. Be sure you get a web host that supports PHP and offers more than a couple of SQL databases.
Now I have a legit sales pitch for you. I used iX Webhosting about 3 years ago, simply because it was the cheapest. I didn't want any special features for that job. I used iX again, last night while building this site for my friend. Frankly, I was amazed and very interested in their various offerings and features. And they are still the cheapest.
While putting the pieces together for this guy's "face to the world", I started wondering how many people don't realize how easy it is to put up a website. Cheap too! A website gives your person, place or thing a nice bit of polish, as I'm sure anyone will agree.
By the same token, I can picture the simplicity of a simple website eluding the average Joe/Josephine, who just got over being befuddled by technology, in general. So here is a not-so-in-depth description of the basic parts and how they work together.
There are a lot of all-in-one package sites like Go-Daddy, etc. out there. They offer packages that include free domain names (for a year), hosting, email and everything else in one package. I don't use these solutions because retaining tight control of your domain name is complicated when you want to move to another host. These package systems have their convieniences, but I let them keep their free domain name for the sake of keeping all my domain registrations in one place. This article will describe the individual parts and their relationship.
GET A DOMAIN NAME
The first thing you need is a domain name. You get one from a registrar. I use 000domains.com. Register.com is another popular one. What happens here, is that you choose an available domain name and then pay a yearly fee for that domain name to belong to you. That's all you get from the registrar.
GET A WEB HOSTING SERVICE
Now you have to find a web host. This is a guy with a lot of servers out there who will rent you the disk space, bandwidth (on which, your pages travel to your visitors), email addresses, etc. for a monthly/yearly fee. Pricing for web hosting is all over the place. It all depends on how naive the customer is. If you are paying as much as $10. a month, you better be getting a lot more features than I know how to use!
Tip: When shopping hosts, try to take a look at the Control Panel offered by the hosting service. They may have a live demo of the control panel for you to look at on their sales page. The Control Panel is where you do all your stuff, like create email accounts, add domains, install scripts, etc. c-Panel is a good Control Panel. If you have a choice, go with a host that has c-Panel
CONFIGURE YOUR DOMAIN TO "BE FOUND"
Now you have a domain name and a place to put it, so to speak. Next, we have to let the Internet know that your domain name can be found at the server space you just rented. Log into your account at the registrar and specify nameservers for your domain. The Internet knows where you just registered your domain. It goes there to learn which hosting service (their servers - nameservers, to be exact) is servicing your domain. Then, all that propagates out to all the routers in the Internet, so your domain name can be found. That propagation, today, takes only minutes, where it used to take a day or so.
BUILD YOUR PAGES
This may seem like a daunting task to many. Its really not a big deal. Many web hosting services come with wizard-type site building scripts. Many installations of Microsoft Office Professional come with Microsoft Front Page. I like using Dreamweaver. Its expensive. The CoffeeCup HTML Editor does just as good a job, at a fraction of the price you can download an eval here. Just remember to use columns to contain your blocks of type- 'nuff said!
Now you are all set to create your own stuff for your website. Discussion Boards, Email Accounts, FTP Accounts, Classified Ads, Newsletter sign-ups, Blog scripts, Shopping Carts. There are so many scripts out there (many provided for free by the hosting service) that do anything from deliver the headlines from your site, to reporting how many days ago you quit smoking. If you didn't know why in the world you would ever want a real website, the list of possible features for your site can be very long, indeed.
Another Tip: Many of these scripts are (beautifully) self-installing PHP scripts that use MySQL databases. Be sure you get a web host that supports PHP and offers more than a couple of SQL databases.
Now I have a legit sales pitch for you. I used iX Webhosting about 3 years ago, simply because it was the cheapest. I didn't want any special features for that job. I used iX again, last night while building this site for my friend. Frankly, I was amazed and very interested in their various offerings and features. And they are still the cheapest.
While it is true that iX does not offer c-Panel, the collection of scripts and the promise of a new & improved control panel is very promising. Unlimited bandwidth, Unlimited domains, 2500 email accounts, 50 SQL databases as well as all the other features offered by the others. And they are still the cheapest. So, if you think you might be interested, please click below. Big Rob loves commissions too.
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