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>> Websites - The Basics

The basic requirements to operate a Website are the domain name, a hosting company, and content.

Domain names are obtained through companies called Registrars. The best kinds of registrars are those that offer the user direct control over changes--GoDaddy and Network Solutions are good that way. Some Registrars, like Bulk Register, are resold through hosting companies. To make a change, you have to involve the hosting company and that can be a problem since it's not in their interest to move you away from the company they are affiliated with.

Although it seems like you should own the domain name, the truth is that you are only licensing its use and you pay annually to retain it. The price ranges from around $7 per year to $35 per year.

The letters after your name are the Top Level Domains (TLD). TLDs describe the type of Website you have:

.com for commercial
.org for not-for-profit or similar organizations
.net (used interchangeably with .com but originally designed for Web hosting and other technical companies)
.edu for educational, etc.

There are newer TLDs like .info that are available, but they would not be as easy to remember as a .com address is. Each country also has a TLD, .us for United States, .ca for Canada, .pl for Poland, .uk for United Kingdom.

A hosting company is an organization that has file servers, mail servers, and servers that name the Websites they are hosting. Computers on the net are really identified by a set of numbers that are associated with the names. Web infrastructure nameservers route the requests to the hosting companies, the hosting companies point the requests to the correct folder on a server.

Good hosting companies have nearly 100% uptime, regular backups, good security policies, and redundant high-capacity connections to the Internet. Typically these come in over phone lines called T1 or T3 and having multiple suppliers (e.g. QWEST plus AT&T) is important in case one telephone network becomes unavailable due to a line problem.

Content is usually produced on a computer at the designer's location, and then uploaded to the server via FTP--a type of file transfer. Some aspects of the content are driven by the operating system of the hosting company's servers, typically either Windows-based or Linux. The toolbox of the designer includes page editing software, FTP software, and software to enhance and manipulate images.

Next edition: HTML, ASP, and dynamic content.

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