Web Hosting Quick Start
Getting a website running requires three basic things:
- Domain name
- Website design
- Web hosting
The Domain Name
Your domain name is said to be your online name; it is how others will perceive you. Just renew your domain name from time to time, so that no one will claim it as theirs. To find out more about this, we have provided a more in-depth webpage about domains to provide you with information about domains.
Namecheap is a great place to register a domain name for only $9.95 a year! www.namecheap.com
The Website Design
A web design is important for people to look around your website. There are four ways for you to obtain web designs:
- Get Somebody to Make a Webpage for You
This is the simplest, but also the priciest option. A web design company or a professional web designer can build your whole website, without you having to do anything except give the instructions. You also don’t have to worry much about web hosting, because you can also get web hosting from your website designers.
Before choosing someone to build your website, examine the portfolios and research the companies or individuals which you want to hire for building your website. Beware of scammers around, both in web hosting and in web designing. But the choice is worth it – for the layperson, a professional web designer can make an exceptional website!
Odesk is a great place to find freelance web designers for any type web work that you need done! www.odesk.com
- Do the Website Yourself
That will require learning HTML which isn’t that hard. No programming is required to put up a website because HTML is a markup language. There are emergent standards like CSS-P and XHTML that are getting more and more used, so designing a webpage that all browsers can accommodate is not that difficult as you think.
A faster way for building a webpage is through Microsoft FrontPage. That application is meant to be user-friendly, so in no time you can stir up a coherent web design. FrontPage Extensions have the support of many web hosts around. FrontPage Extensions are add-ons allowing you to make website updates and provide functionality to your FrontPage!
There are programs like Arachnophilia and Macromedia Dreamweaver that allow greater control over the website design process. They let you change directly the HTML code of your website, thus letting you have more control of each part of your website.
Generally, web design programs like Dreamweaver and FrontPage already have predetermined templates installed with them. Just load these templates up, place then your content, and presto! – you have a ready-made website done.
- Find a template.
Finding a template is sort of midway between hiring a pro and designing your site yourself. With that, you will find a finished design, and then you just place the content in. If you want any modifications in your design, however, you must take care of it by yourself, or you must get someone else to do it.
- Template Monster is recommended for this because of their lagre library. www.templatemonster.com
- There are also free web design templates – they can be found in Open Web Sources Design. www.oswd.org
- Utilize site creators.
Site creators are hybrids of options 2 and 3. You can apply for a web design service where you can make a webpage. That can cost some money, but in some cases the web host provides the service. Explore all the designs, find one, and then alter the design online as you wish. You may do things like changing text, adding logos, and putting up a user-friendly message board.
Remember that your ingenuity and creativity is limited to the capabilities of the web design service. You can do only what the service allows you to do. But because this is an affordable way to put up a website quickly, going for this is a fine option.
Don’t forget that the options above produce static web pages. If you want sites that allow interaction between users through features like search, some programming is necessary. You can do that by looking for web scripts for free or hire a programmer to customize your website for those purposes. One site that has free web scripts is the Web Scripts Directory.
Artisteer is a great site creator program that you can build and export sites in WordPress, Html, Joomla, Drupal, and much more! www.artisteer.com
Getting Web Hosting
There are many types of web hosting. Virtual hosting, dedicated hosting, and collocated hosting are the most commonly used among them. If you are not that demanding in your requirements or if you don’t have a server of your own, virtual hosting is enough. Virtual hosting means the same as “web hosting”, which means that a server hosts your websites along with many other sites.
Here are the steps to follow in hosting your site:
- Find a Web Host – We have a comprehensive directory of hosts where you can search around and find a host of your choice.
- Sign Up – Sign up (or register) with the web host of choice. Signing up requires money, but for many hosts credit cards are acceptable, as well as check/money orders and payments through Paypal.
- Change your Nameservers – If you want people to really go to your website, change the nameservers that your domain has to the nameservers of the web host of your choice. That is to ensure that whenever an Internet user types yourdomain.com (your domain name) and enters it, they will land at your site. The process may require 72 hours to take effect.
- Upload your Website – The most well-known way for this is FTP (File Transfer Protocol) where an FTP client is required, like FileZilla. There are other ways to accomplish this.
- It’s all set and done! – Everyone on the Web can now access your website.
While your website may be all set on the Internet, you still have find ways to make others interested in your website – and that is through Internet marketing. That is another wide topic – to learn more about that, go to Webmaster World. www.webmasterworld.com