So you want to start a website? Where do you start? Let me start with basics:
You need the following to start a website:
1. Domain Name
2. The Web hosting account to host (install) your website (the computer that will store your web pages, HTML codes, databases if any).
3. You need to relate (attach) your Website with the Domain Name you created in the first step.
There are primary two types of firms in this space:
1. Domain registrars
2. Web hosting service providers
The point to note here is that most of the Hosting Service providers are either domain registrars themselves or they are tied up with other domain registrars. So in most cases you just need to approach a hosting service provider to register your domain and also to host your website.
What is hosting a website? Consider it as a server/computer where your website is installed! Well, you surely need some space to install your website!! - This space is provided by the web hosting service provider.
What is registering a domain? Once your website is installed on the computer as what I mentioned above, you need a web presence - a presence in the internet for people to reach you! So that web presence can be achieved by registering a domain account with a registrar (in most cases the hosting firm will do this for you for a small cost). If your web host assists you to register your domain then in most cases they will also relate your domain name with your web hosting account. So that if someone tried to access your domain name they will be directed to the location where you have installed or hosted your website (the computer where your web pages reside).
You have two options:
1. Register the domain name with a domain registrar and host (install) the website with another hosting service provider.
2. So why choose two different firms to start your website? - Hence in most cases you would want choose a hosting service provider who can also register the domain name for your website
Note: do not let the words - web hosts, web hosting services, web hosting firms etc. confuse you. All of them finally point to hosting your website.
Once you register with a web hosting service provider - they will provide a webhosting space for you to host your website and also register a domain for you. Yes, while choosing a domain name please ensure that you choose a name which is related to the content your website. You might need to do some trial and errors before you get the right term for your domain name because in most cases the domain name that sounds good to your website might be already taken or locked by someone else (Yes - the domain names are unique name across the internet). You can also use hyphens in your domain name to help make each word in the domain name stand out.
At this point what you do? How do you setup your website? You can use the integrated tools provided by the web hosting service providers else use some third party tools like xsitepro to build your website. Once you build your website you need to use a FTP tool to upload the website to the web hosting space provided to you and publish the website. Of late the blogging free software "wordpress" is getting popular to host websites because of it's flexibility to setup a full fledged website with practically no much knowledge of HTML or PHP programming.
What's next? You need to register your account by submitting your website's URL to major search engines like Google, yahoo and live.
If you are looking at popularizing your website even more then consider registering your website with alexa, registering your website with directory listing websites etc.
Hope this helps the newbie's in this space.
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