Introduction to Web Hosting

If you are new to web hosting, there aren’t a lot of online sites that will take much time to explain web hosting in a way that’s really helpful, other than to give you some hosting definitions and some coupons for cheap web hosting. No one really talks about why you might have decided to start a website, the steps to go about developing and launching one, and what exactly you should expect from a website once you do. You may have a friend to get you started, but after a while of inactivity on your site, you may spend more time wondering why you even bothered to launch a site than reading articles about how to get traffic to it. So whether you are totally lost as to how to get started with a site, or have a web site that is sitting dormant, here’s some information that might help you launch and manage a productive website.

First of all, if you’re like many people, the Internet has become your lifeline for a lot of things. This probably includes finding general information, going shopping, socializing, banking, ordering services, watching movies, gaming, and doing everything that would have originally required picking up the phone or driving somewhere. You may even have a MySpace Page, or have information about yourself or your company posted on a community page like Craig’s list. You might have gone as far as launching a website and connecting it to one of these sites to take advantage of free web page hosting. You may have gotten a few hits, but what’s the point? You still aren’t a significant part of the Internet, and your efforts so far haven’t produced any results. To figure out how to remedy this situation, or just to get started, let’s break down web hosting into its basic components and see how each one can help you build a noticeable presence on the Internet.

Web hosting can be broken down into four basic components, and they are all important.

The four essential parts that your web site needs to have are:

1. A specific purpose
2. A domain name
3. Site building software
4. Content

Unless you understand these four fundamental parts, your web site won’t have much of a place on the World Wide Web.  Lets delve into these four main parts in more detail.

1. Your Website Should have a Specific Purpose
   Having a specific purpose for getting involved in web hosting is something that many people can overlook. Simply starting a website to sell goods or services isn’t enough. You have to have a mission. For example, if you want to use cheap web hosting to sell sunglasses, you have to have some sort of angle, because like everything else, there are thousands of sites selling sunglasses. You have to narrow the focus of your web site down. Instead of just selling sunglasses, you can specialize in vintage sunglasses or hard-to-find sunglasses. In other words, you aren’t just selling sunglasses; you are selling the service of locating and shipping a product to people who can’t find this product in their area, and are willing to pay you to do it for them. This is why people go on the internet in the first place. If you can provide web surfers with a product or information they want that they can’t get locally or on another web site, they’ll buy it from you.
2. You need to have a Domain Name
   This is why your domain name is important. It goes with the unique product, service or information that you provide. A domain name is another important part of the equation that makes up your web site. Think of your domain name as your physical address on the World Wide Web. It is a place that you own, where you can store information and where everyone who wants to can visit you. It is also like a phone number, in the fact that is has information in it like an extension (.com, .net, .org) where someone can reach you to leave a message, and you can also communicate back. Of course, like a phone number, a domain name is something that you purchase and is also a combination of letters and numbers that is uniquely yours. You can buy a domain name from a web hosting company, who may also sell you a cheap web hosting plan along with your domain name when you buy it. A web hosting plan is the combination of software that will help you get started with developing and publishing your web site, but we’ll talk about that later.

   A domain name can be purchased for a fairly inexpensive price from a low cost web hosting company and must be renewed every year.  Many of these companies include a free domain name if you signup with them.   A domain name is like a phone number in the fact that you will have your own, but different in the fact that you get to make it up yourself. Most web hosting companies will help you do a search to see if anyone has your name already and also give you suggestions about alternatives spellings that you can use in order to establish a unique domain name for your web site. Like a phone number, your domain name should be easy to spell, easy to remember, and say something about your product, message, or organization.

3. Building your Website
   Now that you have a purpose for your web site and a domain name, you are ready to develop or build your site. If you are totally new to web hosting, it is better to purchase a cheap web hosting package to develop your site from a hosting company when you buy your domain name. There are two steps to developing your site; building it and then publishing it. Building your site refers to creating web pages and filling them with text and graphics. Publishing your site means actually putting it out on the Internet where web browsers can find it and open the pages for viewers to look at.

   A web site is organized into pages, which are each a separate file located in the main file that contains all of your web site information. This file is stored on the server, which is a computer that your low cost web hosting company uses to store your files and the many other files of the other people who have also purchased a hosting plan from the hosting company. Sharing a server with other web sites is called shared hosting. This is generally the cheapest business web hosting that you can find on the Internet and is perfect if you are just starting out. The reason why many web developers store their files on a hosting company’s servers is because the servers already have an operating system in place. An operating system is simply the software that allows your site to function on the Internet. Most operating systems are Linux and then some are Windows based. There isn’t a lot that you need to know about these systems right now, other than the fact that it would be very difficult to set them up yourself, which is why people use low cost web hosting companies instead.

   A shared hosting plan will also offer you a certain amount of disk storage space and bandwidth per month. Disk storage space is the amount of space you have on the server; in other words, how many web pages you can have. Data Transfer, or bandwidth, refers to how many times your site can be downloaded by viewers per month. All hosting companies limit how big your web site can be and how many users per month can visit it. If a web hosting company offers you 1,500 GB per month of storage space and 15,000 GB per month of bandwidth, this will be more than enough to run your website.

   Many people will use software like FrontPage to develop their site, but if you are new to hosting, you may find FrontPage as more of a source of frustration than help. This is because it has many advanced features that you might not be ready for if you are just starting out. It is better to find a cheap hosting company with a free site builder and FrontPage extensions and work with the free site builder first. A free site builder will take you through the process of creating web pages step by step and also comes with templates and graphics that will organize your site for you. When you are ready to publish your site, all you have to do is click a button and your site will be live. It may only have static pages, but as you become familiar with web hosting, you can move up to FrontPage and create a much more exciting site.

4. Content! Content! Content!
   Now it’s time to look at the content of your web site, or what viewers will be looking at when they visit your site. When you are starting out, web content is mainly text and photographs. In the case of selling products, the pictures would be of the merchandise that you sell and the text would be descriptions of the product along with your company’s mission statement. You can also use different fonts, colors, themes, and even sound, video, and animation to get your message across. More advanced content will require the knowledge of HTML coding and a program like FrontPage, but for now keep you graphics and text simple. Most people will spend only a few moments on your site at first, so explaining the purpose of your site very quickly is important. It is best to get right to the point, so use bullet-style writing and short sentences to communicate exactly what you are selling.

Those are the four basics to web hosting. There is a lot more to learn than what we have talked about, but hopefully, this introduction to web hosting will help get you started and on your way to establishing a presence on the Internet. After that, you can look at more advanced ways to develop your site, and also how to get rankings and more traffic to your site.