When you make your own web site, they consist of two things:
- A domain name
- A web hosting company
The above two need to work together to create your web site, they are both separate though it may look as though it is one single entity but actually they are not. It is unlike a house and its address though for a physical building the address and the structure is link together and cannot be separated. However for a web site, the domain name and web hosting company can be separated. The domain name is where the people could find your web site while the web hosting company is where you would place your files for the web site to function. You can actually move your web site domain and files to another web hosting company if you have decided to use another web hosting company services.
Domain Name
A domain name is what your website address location; a place where people can find your site. It replaces the actual DNS coded address of your web hosting service provider otherwise known as IP in the form of four set of numbers, for example, 121.246.107.151
Domain name makes it easier to remember than a string of abstract numbers and makes a website memorable. You want to buy some books? Go to Amazon.com, do a search, then type in Google.com or Yahoo.com. Who wants to type in 121.246.xxx.xxx, that is so difficult to remember!
If you are going into making a website for the long term, deciding on a domain name should be thought out carefully. It should be as short and sweet as possible and be fairly descriptive of what your website is all about. With the ever growing population of web site coming out every second, it is impossible to get that single word as your web site domain name. Very likely every word that is in the dictionary is already registered by someone somewhere. Only the rich corporation could afford to bid and pay for those name for their web site.
As an individual or small business, you need to come up with a creative combination of words to describe your web site. Even these are beginning to be taken up and gets harder day by day to get your choice domain name. There are ways to get the permutations and variations to the choice word that you are considering. Sometimes you just have no choice, like when I set up a travel destination site, the domain name was three words long! All the choice names were already taken up. I think I should say mine was rather fortunate as I have come across some which were much longer!
Web hosting company
A web hosting company is where web pages and files will reside. When configured, the domain name will tell the browser where in the World Wide Web to look for your files to display your web site.
Choosing a web hosting company is not just about pricing alone. It has to be reliable with your web site always up most of the time. However no web hosting company dare to admit a 100% uptime. Most will guarantee 99% uptime because a web server where your files are hosted need to do maintenance once in a while and requires shutting. There are also situation where server load, or the amount of traffic volume exceeds its ability to cope and the server will shutdown to preserve its integrity.
Not all webhosting company service is the same. Some are rather unique and offers features that are not available elsewhere. Some position themselves as e-business solution to the individual, home and small businesses. I myself am using a few web hosting company to capture the different features available on each web hosting.
If you don’t want to look out for any special features and just setting up a basic web site, you may just go for the cheapest one available. Using the cheapest web hosting company may not always be the best option if you plan to do more than just setting up a few web pages. Some web hosting company tries to attract potential new users by offering very cheap price but would remove some of the features of a better hosting plan. If you are just making a few static web pages and not planning to grow the web site, that would be acceptable I suppose. But if you plan to make the web site grow and do more from it, a better featured web hosting plan would be recommended.
Web hosting company could provide affordable price hosting plans is because they use shared hosting. i.e. your web site is not the only one being hosted onto their web server. There could be as many as thousands of web sites residing on any of their shared hosting web servers. The advantage of shared hosting versus dedicated hosting is the price. You and I could set up a web site affordably. The disadvantage is should any of the web site co-hosted has a tremendous spike in web site traffic, the server will crash and shutdown, taking down all the web site that is shared in the same server. Usually this don’t always happen and most of the time you can be rest assured that your web site is always up and running.
- Make Your Own Web Site – Introduction
- Getting started – make your own web site
- Web hosting – what to look out
- Web hosting – exploring your web hosting account
- Make your own web site – build up page by page or use open source software?
- How I made my own web site
- Make and build a free web site? Sure you can!