Web Site Basics

Web Site Basics

There are some website basics and elements of web hosting that we need to cover before we get into the more technical details of easy website design.

I find that sometimes learning a new subject is kind of intimidating, but once I start to take the first steps and get a little taste of things, it's not as hard as I thought it would be -- It's partially a psychological game of translating technical jargon into everyday plain talk. Learning how to create a website is no different.

Don't let all the crazy buzz terms scare you away. You'll find that it's really not that tough at all, and if you do get hung up or have a particular question you can email me to see if I can be of assistance.

Lets cover some website and web hosting vocabulary -- a web hosting dictionary -- which, depending on your internet experience, you may or may not know already. These terms you'll need to know just so that we can lay the foundation and clearly communicate whats going on when building a new website.

Web Hosting Dictionary

Domain (domain name)

The name of a web site. Basically its a unique identifier of your site, which is usually the same name of your company or site name. Having a domain name does not mean you have a website. For example you could own www.bignotice.com, but if you are not serving any webpages then you really don't have a live website. Rather you have reserved a site name. Some people have made a living out of squatting on domain names. This means that they have reserved a popular domain name in the hopes that someone will want the name(s) bad enough to buy them at a premium price. So domain names can be both fun and frustrating. A lot of the time you'll find that the name you want is taken or squatted by some other person. But once you find a good name, you'll be happy so that you switch your focus to building up a solid feature and content rich website.

Hosting Provider

The company that serves your webpages. When you pay a web host to serve your website, it places your pages (files) on a computer (called a server) that is (supposed to be) on 24/7 so that anytime your website is requested, your visitor can view it. That means when you type in your favorite address, say www.youtube.com you are connected to the computer(s) that have the pages that serve youtube's frontpage.

Hosting Package

In most cases a hosting provider offers both domain name registration and webpage serving. This is basically a package deal for all the infrastructure you need to having your very own website. There are a lot of packages out there with varying degrees of prices and services.

You could alternatively serve pages from your own home computer, but your website would only be available when your computer is on.  To serve a web site from your own computer requires setup that is a bit complicated, and paying for hosting services is relatively cheap anyways.

Shared hosting

Serving more than one domain from one web server computer. Depending on your needs, you'll find basic hosting packages from about 4-7 dollars per month. Almost always, when the cost of hosting is in this range, the computer that is serving your website is also serving other peoples websites too. Some shared hosting computers serve 400+ websites, however if your site is new and has a relatively low amount of traffic (less than 10,000 visits per day), you should see no effect on your website's performance.

SSH and SSH access

SSH is a low level command line utility to run commands on the computer hosting your website. If/when your hosting company grants you SSH privileges you will have the capabilities to execute special UNIX commands on your website's files.

Since this privilege can be a security risk, most web hosting companies will ask for additional proof of identification before granting access.  Don't worry if you don't understand fully understand SSH.  You usually only need to use SSH in special circumstances.

Disk Storage Space

Disk storage space is the amount of hard disk memory that your total site files are alloted by your web hosting provider. This includes your webpages, file uploads, temporary files, etc. If you go over this limit, you will most likely be charged an extra, expensive fee.  So be sure an not to exceed this amount!

Transfer bandwidth

Transfer bandwidth is the amount of uploading and downloading that is allowed to and from your hosting server. When people look at your web site they use up some of the transfer bandwidth.  This amount includes such things as transfers through web browsing and ftp. So if your site has big movies and images, it will use more transfer bandwidth.  Usually hosting providers will provide a package that is has a very high limit on transfer bandwidth.  If you are going have a website with a lot of movies and other large images or files be sure and get ample bandwidth.  Some hosting packages offer an unlimited transfer bandwidth.

Moving forward

This web hosting dictionary covers the most important elements of web hosting that you need to know when learning to build a new website. Like I said, it may seem like weird terminology or a bit overwhelming just to be able to put something on the web. But trust me its really not that hard.  Good luck and happy web site building!