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 the domain name fee on time (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 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: Chose a Domain Name, Choose a Registrar

Your first step is to choose your website name, commonly called a domain name. This name is extremely important. It will be the name people associate with your website, your company and you.

Your next step is to register your domain name from a registrar. As we said above, you aren't really purchasing your website name, but renting it from the registrar. Most domain names cost about $10 per year, and most registrars provide similar services -- for example:

• Registration for multiple years
• Bulk registration for people who want many domain names
• Notification services so you don't let your domain name expire accidentally

Shopping around might provide you a discount on your desired domain name, as well as discounts for add-ons such as private registration (which guards your personal information from the public). It pays to look around and see what's out there.

Take a look at this list of registrars to get started.

The most important thing to remember is that your domain name must be renewed after a given period of time, depending on how many years you pay for when you first register. Should you forget to pay, you will lose your right to use the name, and it will become available to anyone who wants it. It would be a shame to lose the right to use the domain name that's become part of your brand and identity, just because you forgot to pay a simple fee.

Your Website Location: Choose a Web Hosting Company

Once you've secured your domain name, you'll need to find someone to host your website on a computer, known as a "server". This server will connect your site to the Internet, so people can find it.

The cost of hosting a website is a wild card. It really depends on what you want the website to do.

• If you want your website to be nothing more than an online business card, you'll need a simple hosting plan.
• If you want to host a community on your website, you'll need something a hosting plan that can accommodate databases and a large number of visitors coming to your site. You'll be looking for a plan that offers you both more storage space and more bandwidth.
• If you are selling goods or services from your website, you'll need to consider even more complex hosting plans to make sure your site doesn't lock up just when people are trying to buy.

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.

Website Hosting Terms to Understand

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.