A friend recently asked me about how to own your own website… this is something I’ve had to answer so many times I decided to finally write it down.
There are two things to having ‘your own’ website:
1. Register a domain name.
2. Find a hosting provider.
(most companies allow you to do both at once)
To get a .com .net .us whatever address, you need to ‘register’ the
domain name of your choice with a company called a Domain Name
Registrar. There are a few select companies which have access to
modify information on the Internet and add entries into the system
known as ‘DNS’ – the domain name system. Here’s a couple popular ones
to just register a name with: http://www.godaddy.com/,
http://www.register.com/
Domain name registrars usually go by yearly rates, and will vary
anywhere from $35/year to $8/year.
Now, that name only gets you a small part of a personal website – that
gets you an entry in the Internet’s root domain name servers which
translates your domain name ‘fishstickmartyrs.com’ to an IP (Internet
Protocol) address. This is important so that when someone types in
your foobar.com address it gets translated to an address of 1’s and
0’s so your computer can connect to the server where your website is.
An IP address is unique to every computer connected to the Internet
and is the actual address which data gets routed to through the wires.
Think of the IP address as the Internet’s equivalent of a mailing
address. My mailing address is 1234 Briarboot Rd. Lincoln, NE 68588 and
that’s what you need to send information to me —- on the Internet
it’s a string of digits… normally people see it as a grouping of
four digits. My IP address at home is 24.27.144.78, and mine at work
is 129.93.25.136.
What a lot of people don’t know is, that’s truly all you need – a
computer connected to the Internet with an IP address! If you entered
in http://24.27.144.78/ , or http://129.93.25.136/ , you would see my
personal website and my work website respectively. So, in all
actuality, you don’t need a .com or a .net address at all. You could
just say, visit my website at http://###.###.###.###/ … which
actually sounds kind of absurd, because those numbers are hard to
remember. That’s why the DNS system is necessary.. to give humans
something a little easier to remember to connect to the various
machines on the Internet they want information from.
Keep in mind owning a domain name gives you a lot of potential
addresses. For example, I own saltybeagle.com. This means I own
*.saltybeagle.com… so I can arbitrarily set up any name I want on
it. shockers.saltybeagle.com, tyson.saltybeagle.com,
mike.saltybeagle.com etc etc.
Ok, now you know all about DNS and why it’s important.
The second part is Hosting, or a hosting provider. When you type in
the domain name, your computer checks with a server to get the IP
address of the machine holding the information. That machine can be
one that you own, or more commonly a machine you lease space on. I
host my own website, which means my computer at home is my server. So
when you type in http://saltybeagle.com/ my computer at home is
sending you the information (most people don’t do this unless they’re
uber geeks).
The other option is leasing space on a server someone else owns. A
hosting provider is a company which offers you space on a server
connected to the Internet. Most offer various plans with different
levels of service. Things to be conscious of are bandwidth, space,
monthy rate, email options, and shell access or ftp access (if you
plan on doing anything fancy). Bandwidth in the hosting arena refers
to how much data your website can serve out in a month, and space
means how much data you can store on their server. The monthly rate is
how much it will cost you to have them host your website — when you
look at a hosting provider, note if domain name registration (our #1)
is included in that monthly rate or separate. Hosting can cost you
anywhere from $8/month to the skies the limit. Email is important if
you want to send email as todd@fishstickmartyrs.com. Shell access is
important for users who want to do more than just serve out flat
files, and do advanced things — something you may not need at all.
Basic plans will cover most beginning users — and all hosting
providers offer ways to increase your plan.
I personally have no experience with hosting providers, but I know of
people who use and are happy with http://www.dreamhost.com/
Now, there are various places out there who will give you a free ride
because they gain from advertising or they want your content. This is
the case of blogspot for example. They provide you space and your own
subdomain entry advancedsasquatch.blogspot.com, and they are a hosting
provider for you free of charge. Kinda nifty in a way… you get free
hosting, and don’t have to pay for anything. But — you don’t have the
vanity of your own domain name, nor all the other features other
hosting providers might offer.
Others offer free space for just certain content — take pictures for
example: http://flickr.com/ and http://picasaweb.google.com/ will
host your pictures for you for free…
Yahoo/gmail want your email content and they’ll host your email for
free etc etc.
Keep this in mind when you consider hosting and bandwidth. You can
save if you buy a small hosting plan and utilize the services of
another source like flickr to serve out your pictures, which is
typically the large percentage of bandwidth — or keep using yahoo,
or gmail for email.
If you plan it right, you can certainly get by with only buying a
Domain Name! But, you have to plan out your services, and become a
server administrator yourself or leave your information in the hands
of another hosting provider — each has its benefits and drawbacks.
