Web Site Hosting : From Domain Registration to Getting it Online

By John Lenaghan

Once you've chosen your domain name and got it registered, what's your next step?

Your web host will give you the details you need to get your site up and running. This will include passwords to log into your website account, the paths to the directories where you need to upload your information, and most importantly the addresses of your domain name servers.

DNS servers are the link between your domain name (mydomain.com) and your IP address (a numbered address like 123.456.78.9. Every web server on the internet has a unique IP address.

If your website is hosted on a dedicated server, your IP address is unique to your website. Your website will respond whether someone types the domain name or the IP address into their browser.

Most websites are hosted on shared servers, however. What this means is that a single server hosts many websites, and each one shares the same IP address. If you enter the IP address of a shared server in your browser, it won't display your website.

DNS is the "translation" layer between domain names and IP addresses that allows multiple sites on one server.

Configuring Your Website On DNS

When you register your domain name, it will be pointing to the DNS servers for your chosen registrar. Until you have a account set up with a hosting service, your domain will usually point to an error page or an "under construction" page.

Keep in mind that there's no time limit between registering your domain and choosing a web host. Some people register domains and never actually get a website hosted on them.

If you've bought your domain with plans to use it, you'll need to sign up for an account with a web host and upload your website's files to their server.

The first step in making your website active is to change the DNS servers on file with your domain registrar to the ones that are given to you by your web host.

The DNS server information will look similar to this:

Primary Name Server: NS1.SOMEDOMAIN.COM (123.456.78.9) Secondary Name Server: NS2.SOMEDOMAIN.COM (123.456.7.89)

You'll get this information from your hosting company when you sign up for a hosting account. If you can't find this information, you'll need to contact your web host to get it. Otherwise your website won't be accessible from the internet.

Once you have this information from your host, you'll need to change the settings on file with your registrar to the new addresses. If your domain name was included with the purchase of your hosting, the web host will normally update this information for you automatically.

Once the DNS servers are registered it can take up to 48 hours for your site to be accessible across the internet. This is because of the way the DNS system works.

The domain names and IP addresses are stored in a database that is distributed through thousands of computers around the world. Each computer keeps a small part of the database cached and if they get a request for an unknown domain, they have to forward that request to another computer until the information is found.

This database gets updated on a constant basis on each of these computers, but it can take some time for your new website's information to spread throughout the world.

John Lenaghan writes about how to choose business web hosting, ecommerce hosting and other website hosting topics on the Hosting Report website. Find out more at http://www.hostingreport.org.

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Free Web Hosting or Paid? Here's How to Decide

by: Anthony Hamill

Have you wondered if free web hosting is any good? More importantly, is it a viable option for someone who wants to set up an online business presence without a significant cash commitment?. It may be but only if you take the time to understand what it will and will not provide.

Free web hosting usually comes with significantly limited capacity and services. And while free web hosts may not charge you anything for hosting your web site, they still have to generate revenue to stay in business.

The Price of “Free”

The way most of them do this (there are exceptions as you’ll see below) is by inserting paid ads on your web site. And since you won’t be able to control what kind of ads are posted on your site, there’s a good chance you’ll have ads from competitors (if you’re trying to run a business) or ads that may not be on a topic you want to be associated with. Unfortunately, that's often the price you’ll pay for "free" web hosting.

To limit the amount of resources you can use, free web hosting plans come with very limited disk space and bandwidth and may even impose restrictions on the types of content you can upload to your site. For example, you may not be allowed to sell anything on your web site.

What do you really want to do?

If you intend to start a business on the cheap then this obviously isn’t going to be satisfactory. Some free web hosting plans prevent you from uploading videos or music files because they take up a lot of storage space and use a great deal of bandwidth when your visitors try to access them.

The Big Risk

Finally, and of greatest concern, is that you may wake up one day and find that your web site has simply vanished without warning. Companies that provide free web hosting pop up practically every day, but they also disappear with alarming regularity.

So if you plan on putting any real effort into developing a web site for personal or business use, you'll be better served by selecting an established, reliable web host.

Professional Image

There are a number of companies that provide free web hosting under your own unique domain name (not a subdomain under them). All you have to do register your domain through them and pay the annual renewal fee of around $15-25. This way you’ll be able to have free hosting under your own domain and the credibility that comes with it.

The Bottom Line

You should look for a free hosting provider that provides a simple upgrade path. This way you can can enjoy free web hosting now and have your own unique domain name (plus the credibility it brings) for nothing more than the cost of a domain registration fee. You should later be able to upgrade with no disruption when and if you decide you’re ready to move up to a paid plan.

About The Author

Anthony Hamill is the founder of http://www.Web-Host-Watch.Com which is devoted to helping new webmasters learn the basics of web hosting. It provides tutorials, tips on avoiding common mistakes, a glossary of web hosting terms, and a list of Top Web Hosts.

How to Pick Your Domain Name

How to Pick Your Domain Name
by: Scott Bianchi

You have been thinking of starting your own website. You have done some preliminary research and you are ready to go, all you need to do now is pick your domain name. Pretty simple, right? Well, it is not as simple as most people think, including myself. I thought it would be the easiest part of starting my website but you really need to put some thought into it.

You need a website name that is memorable. You can do all the work on the website you want but if people don’t remember your name it will be hard to get them to come back. You also need a name that is somewhat relevant to the content of your site. Here is where you begin to run into some roadblocks however. With the amount of websites being created (it is estimated there will be 500 million sites created by the end of the decade) the availability of the real popular names is limited. Now you need to consider multiple word names and this is where it becomes even more tricky.

To make things a bit easier to understand I will use my own domain name as an example, because I learned the hard way. With any website you need to concern yourself with SEO (search engine optimization). This is basically a formula of what the search engines use to look up websites when someone punches in a keyword. The sites that play this game right will find themselves on the first couple of pages for their given keyword. When I first chose my domain name I went with www.bestinternetbargains.com. Not a bad name, so I thought. Pretty straightforward on what I would be focusing my site on, right? When I picked the name I knew nothing of SEO. I thought you created a site and BAM, it appeared on Google in the number one spot.

A major part of SEO is links to other sites. The actual wording you use in the link that appears on other sites is called the “anchor text”. This is one of the major things searches engines use in ranking the pages. In most cases you get to determine what your anchor text will be. But, if you write articles like this one, and you put your website in the signature and people post your articles that counts as a link with anchor text. So, in my case I have had many people publish my articles, which is great, but the anchor text appeared as bestinternetbargains. Not many people are doing searches in Google or any of the search engines for that word. This was hurting my SEO. I was the only site found for that search word so that was great, but I was the only one doing that search. Recently I changed my name to www.best-internet-bargains.com. Same name but the dashes make all the difference. It separates all the words. Now if someone publishes one of my articles my anchor text would be those three different words. With the combination of articles being published and any links I exchange with other sites I can now make my anchor text internet bargains and increase my chances of appearing high in the rankings for those search words.

As you can see, something as simple as some dashes in the name can make a huge difference. If you are lucky enough to find a one word domain to be available that is related to your site content then you do not need to worry about the dashes obviously. As I mentioned before, this is unlikely to happen. If you have read my other articles about starting your own website you will see that I have mentioned SEOelite (http://hop.clickbank.net/sbianchi/bryxen1). This is the tool I used to help me with the anchor text breakdown. It does many important things in addition to breaking down your anchor text such as, allowing you to examine your competition’s website so you know what you need to beat to take the top ranking for your keyword search. For example, let’s say I am the number one site for the keywords internet bargains. If my anchor text uses these words 90% of the time then you will know you need to be at 91# to take the top spot for those keywords. It will allow you to breakdown the sites your competition is linked to, which is important in the SEO formula as well. This tool was the best $167 I have spent on my website. I highly recommend it if you want your site to be ranked highly.

Building a website is probably the easiest part of having a site. You need to pick the right domain name, created the right content (which SEOelite will also teach you how to do), write effective meta tags, and find quality linking partners. Now that you have read this, and hopefully found it useful, get to picking that domain name. I hope to see your site on the internet soon.

About The Author

Scott Bianchi operates www.best-internet-bargains.com. He writes on a variety of topics. If you would like to be added to his distribution list for his new articles when they are published just send an email to articles@bestinternetbargains.com.

Different Types of Web Hosting Explained

by: Paul Hanson

There are many different types of web hosting available. Which type one chooses should hinge upon what one wants to accomplish with his or her web site. Some web hosting services are free, but place ads on web sites. Whereas other web hosting types can be more expensive, but provide a lot more assistance and bandwidth. The four main web hosting types are free web hosting, shared web hosting, and dedicated web hosting (both managed and unmanaged).

Free web hosting is the simplest kind of web hosting that one can get. This type of web hosting is usually supported by ads on hosted web sites. Features for this type of web hosting are limited, and therefore it is a better option for people who are just starting out on the Internet and are interested in having a small site with little traffic. The type of domain one receives in free web hosting is typically a subdomain (yoursite.webhost.com) or a directory (www.webhost.com/~yoursite). Most free web hosts do not have support for MySQL, multiple e-mail accounts, and PHP.

Shared web hosting is actually the most popular type of web hosting service. Shared web hosting allows more than one site to be hosted on the same server. Additionally, the hosts provide system administration. For users that do not want to have the burden of running a sever, shared web hosting is a great choice. The individual hosting plan may differ, but most hosts provide the user with elements such as PHP, ASP, MySQL, more bandwidth, and multiple e-mail addresses. More services are often available in shared web hosting than are available with simple free web hosting (including the ability to have your own domain name!).

The last two types of web hosting are managed dedicated web hosting, and unmanaged dedicated web hosting. Dedicated web hosting is a wise choice for someone who wants more storage and bandwidth, and also wants features that are not available with shared and free web hosting. In dedicated servers, users are not limited to a certain number of databases and e-mail addresses. Additionally, users usually receive a very high amount of bandwidth in comparison to other hosting types. The typical dedicated server plan provides the user with 500 to 1,000GB of monthly bandwidth.

In unmanaged dedicated web hosting, the user is the server administrator. This allows the user the greatest amount of control and flexibility. Of course, many people do not know how to handle the task of being a server administrator and do not want to learn. Therefore, this is not a viable option for some.

When looking for a web host, it is important to consider the purpose of the web site and what one’s capabilities are. Pricing for web hosts is dependant upon the support, reliability, features, and security one wants. Choosing a type of web hosting may seem like a daunting task, but simply doing research and making an educated decision should yield satisfaction and success on this critical matter.

About The Author

Paul Hanson recommends Net Explorers ( http://www.hosting-netexplorers.co.uk/ ) for quality UK hosting services.