What is a website, and how do I get one?
January 28, 2010 – 9:00 am |This is a question that I feel a lot of people thing they know, or are too afraid to ask so they just assume certain things. Hopefully, after this article things will be much clearer.
In order to have a website, you have to have these 3 things:
1. Domain
A domain or “domain name” is the text that people type into the address bar of their browser in order to get to your website. For example, when you go to Google, you would type “google.com”, this is Google’s Domain name. The domain name becomes part of the URL. Where google.com is the domain name, the URL would be http://google.com.
You can get a domain through a registrar. The registrars job is to sell domains that are not already taken, you will never be able to buy a domain that is currently owned, unless the owner is selling it to you directly.
Domains may be found with the Top Level Domain (TLD) of “.com”, “.org”, “.net” or “.info” as well as many many other different TLDs.
2. Web Host
The web host is a company that manages multiple web servers, the operating system on those servers, and the network the servers are on which allow them out to the internet. Typically people will rent space on a server from the web host. This space is where your website is physically located. You can push files to the server, which will make up the website when you view it in the browser.
When you rent space on a server you can get “shared” hosting, “virtual dedicated” hosting and “dedicated” hosting. Shared means that there are many people on the same server, usually these accounts are cheaper but you have to share the server with other people. You will NOT be able to access other people’s data on the server. With Virtual Dedicated, you are given more space and more of the server’s resources just for your own website. With dedicated, you are given the entire server, which means all of the hardware for this server is allocated to your website only.
3. Website Code
The website code is what tells the server what you are going to display to your users when they visit your site. This code can be anything from a simple business card website to a more complex website like Amazon.com. All of the code for a website basically boils down to few text files being read by the server, processed and then the results are displayed in the browser.
A common server software that many people use is WordPress. WordPress is blog software written in PHP, which you download and then put on your server. This software creates the look, feel, and functionality of the website for both the visitors and authors of the blog.
The information above is very generic, but it should give you at lease a better idea of what you will need to get a website. As always with my articles, if you have questions or want more information about a specific topic, please leave a comment.
