Difference between revisions of "Learn/Getting-a-Website-for-the-First-Time"

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By DrewMyers & MarkDilley
email or post a comment for DrewMyers / email or post a comment for MarkDilley

[Need to do/think:

• I wonder if this is a two part story? ~~ MarkDilley
• Get DrewMyers photo]

First, let's clear up a popular misconception. You don't buy a website name - you lease it. This is not how people in the business of selling website names - also called domain names - present it.

It's important to know this from the start, because you can lose your website if you don't pay your rent. (see Virtual Property) In an instant, all the hard work you've put into building a good website with a carefully-chosen name, and building your brand around that name, can be gone. So before you rush off to publish your award-winning website design, or start cashing in on your perfect business idea, you really need to understand how the website name system actually works.

Often, people who don't have a website already (and even people who do!) confuse the two pieces of a website: its name and its location.

Your Website Name

First, you need to decide on and procure a website name. This is commonly called a domain name, and is obtained through a Registrar.

The name you choose is important, as it will be the online home for you and what name people will know your website as. Take a look at our article on this here.

Website names generally cost ~$10 a year - sometimes more, sometimes less. Generally, registrars provide similar services associated with domains (with the exception of differences in hosting plans, which we will see in the next section.) However, shopping around might provide you with some price discounts as well as discounts on add-ons such as private registration. It pays to look around and see what's out there.

• see a list of registrars.

The key point here is that domain names must be renewed periodically. You must renew them on an annual basis (you can pay in advance or for multiple years.) Should you forget to pay, you will lose the lease on the name, and it will become available for the public to obtain. All your hard work in cultivating a name for yourself will go by the wayside simply because you forgot to pay that simple fee.

Two: Your Place

Second, you need to Host an actual website on someones server (an actual machine) that will "connect" your site to the Internet.

The cost for hosting a website is pretty much the wildcard expense here. It really depends on what you want the website to do.

• If you want a website as an online business card, you'll need a simple hosting plan.
• If you want to try and host a community on your website, you'll need something more elaborate with databases and larger bandwidth limits.
• If you are selling goods or services, you'll need to consider even more complex hosting.

You'll need to shop around for the host and services that best suit your needs. Read reviews and comments left by customers on the hosts' sites or by looking for sites dedicated to reviews of webhosts. Your fellow webmasters can provide a wealth of information about hosts.

• see several website, hosting, lists.

There are a few terms you should know and keep in mind as you research hosts:

• Uptime - The amount of time on average a hosts servers are actually functioning. All hosts are subject to occasional downtime. The measure is how often they suffer from it. The higher the % of uptime, the less time your site is unavailable.
• Disk Space - The amount of file space you are allowed to fill with all the files included in your website. All your webpages, files and email are included in this quota.
• Bandwidth - How much traffic you are allowed to send and receive in any given month. If you are going to have downloadable files, you will definitely need to look for a larger quota here.
• Overselling - This is when a host actually sells more disk space and bandwidth than their server is physically capable of providing. Their strategy is that not everyone will use all their allocated resources. This is a problem when too many customers use all their allocated resources, and the server can not handle it.

The two of us run the spectrum of types of hosts we employ. Mark personally has many websites where he only leases the website name and point it to a free page, like on AboutUs.org or a free weblog, like Blogger.com or posterous.com. On the other hand, most of Drew's sites need the more complex and full-featured hosts to be able to use such things as forums and eCommerce applications.

So, to sum things up, two steps: think of your (1) website name as a pointer to your (2) content which is the website. Some companies will do both for you, but do your research and know what to expect.