Posts Tagged ‘Hosting’
Monday, January 4th, 2010
If you are a business owner or are thinking of starting a web site, this post is for you. As more and more traffic hits the web, it is very important for anyone thinking of starting their own web site to have some basic knowledge about what that requires.
In this post, I hope to help you understand a few basics BEFORE launching that site.
Domains . . . you are the king of your castle
The domain name or domain as they are often referred to is actually the name of your web site, rather it is the name that URLs use to access web sites. Or another way to put it, as Wikipedia so eloquently explains,” domain names are often seen in analogy to real estate in that (1) domain names are foundations on which a website (like a house or commercial building) can be built and (2) the highest ‘quality’ domain names, like sought-after real estate, tend to carry significant value, usually due to their online brand-building potential, use in advertising, search engine optimization, and many other criteria.”
So for example, our domain is called www.y-desygn.com . You can have several domains point to one server; you can type in www.y-desygn.com or www.ydesygn.com , both will take you to the same web site.
You can also have sub-domains under your main domain, meaning you can create multiple pages under the domain, such as your blog or your storefront. An example being the sub-domain you are on right now, www.y-desygn.com/ydesygnblog .
If you are creating a web site, it is HIGHLY recommended that YOU OWN your domain or at the very least, have the person buying it on your behalf make you the administrator and enter your email information as the administrative contact in whois.
As web designers, we have seen too many customers who don’t own their domain or are not the administrator of their domain, suffer many a headache when they try to transfer to different hosting or when the company who purchased the domain goes out of business. Unfortunately many companies feel threatened and refuse to let go of the domain when it comes to transferring hosting, leaving the business owner in quite a dilemma.
Now that you know, you won’t be one of them.
Hosting . . . and we’re not talking your typical dinner party
After you have your domain name, you need a place to host your site. Hosting simply means a “space” to store your web site. A hosting company will store the files for your web site on a server that is always on, so that when someone “clicks” on your site it is readily available. There are many different types of hosting accounts such as free, dedicated, virtual dedicated, managed, cloud and so forth that I won’t go into here, but feel free to click on each one as it will take you to pages that will define each of them for you.
It is important to choose the best option for what you are trying to accomplish, if you are just creating a personal page to share with friends and family or a blog, a free account might be the right option. However, if you want to create a storefront and showcase 100’s of products, this definitely wouldn’t be the right option. You would want to go with something like a managed account. I say this because If you have no web experience, it is much less complicated to have someone else manage the security and maintenance of your account than to try to do it yourself.
Typically you “rent or lease” hosting from a 3rd party company that takes care of managing the web site for you. We are happy to help you with your hosting needs, contact us today for a free quote.
Tags: Arizona Web Design Services, Business, domains, Hosting, Web Design, Web Sites, Y Desygn
Posted in Web Site Information | 3 Comments »
