Basic ingredients for a web site

There are some main ingredients and some optional parts to getting a website up and running. In this article, we will discuss the essentials you need to at least be viewable on the internet. Main components are having a domain name and web hosting for your files, the actual physical files like HTML, that make up the design of the page and the option to secure your content against non encrypted attacks. Let's take a look.

Registering a Domain Name

When starting up your website, you need a domain name to help people remember how to get to your site. Google.com is one of the most familiar domain name that almost everyone using the web knows. Upon getting your initial site up and running, you could choose the route of a cheap domain name provider to help start your web business. These companies almost always provide similar features to the big companies and are a great alternative.

Web Hosting

You need a location to store your web site files. No matter what type of content you are displaying, including images or PDF files, they have to be accessible on a computer server that is always on. This is where an affordable web hosting solution comes into play. For a relatively inexpensive price of less than five to ten dollars a month you can get your web files hosted for others to see.

Web Site Design

Your web site will be designed with a variety of HTML files, Images, Videos, Flash and PDF files. A web developer can create this for you or you will do it yourself. The better the skills of the person doing it, the better your site will look like. Web hosting sitebuilders or Dreamweaver may be used to get your site up and running quickly. Again, quality is directly in relation to the tools used and skill level of the person doing it.

Secured Hosting Service (Optional)

Having your hosting secured is an optional practice for most sites as there is usually just static data. If your site is collecting information such as credit card data, then you will need to looking into buying ssl certificate for your website to ensure your visitors data is protected. The data is protected by a web server certificate that changes your site from http to https, indicating to the user it is secure. The transformation to an https site is what makes the site use the certificate to encrypt the transmitted data, so it is kept away from prying eyes. For these sites, you definately need it, but not for regular information web sites or blogs.

Those are four basics you need to start any web site and will get you started. You then need to decide what additional components you may need to also include in your web site package.

Shared hosting should have add on domains

For the longest time web hosting setups were made to accommodate only one web site to be hosted. As technology has improved as well as structures, there has been a shift in almost all hosts that allow you to buy web hosting. The ability to include a certain number of addon domains in their packages has been added, while some do not restrict how many add on domains you can have. It is still not advised to host to many domains within one account, but this is a huge money saver for those who may want to host a couple of small sites.

An add on domain is as the name implies added on to your existing hosting account. A main domain will always be hosted for the account, and then normally within a subfolder on that account, your addon domain will be hosted. So when you connect via ftp the first folder you see will be for maindomain.com files. You will then create a subfolder or the hosting will create the subfolder for you (normally something to do with the domain), like a folder named addondomain.com, will contain the files for your second domain. Now if you type maindomain.com, you will see it as its own site, and the same for addondomain.com. Your visitor will not know it is hosted on the same hosting as it will appear separately hosted.

Affordable low cost web hosting solutions are popping up everywhere, and normally the mid to higher based packages will offer add on domains as an option. Note, this does vary from provider. When you find the hosting provider offering the package you want, you then rinse and repeat with as many domains as the provider will allow you to add on. You do have to remember not to delete these subfolders or your site will stop working, and it may get messy with too many subfolders for addon domains.

Now that you are able to host multiple domains within one account, enjoy your savings.

Is a personal or corporate domain the same?

Computer Users involved in the web site industry are all familiar with the concept of a domain name. In fact, anyone who surfs the web will have used a domain name at some time. Yahoo.com being very popular domain names viewed by many on a hourly basis. Let's talk about the idea of a personal domain name versus corporate domain name registration. Those who are confused need not be. They are realistically the same thing with a different way of thinking in what the domain name will show.

Personal domain registration

As the title suggests, a personal domain name is for the person looking to set up a web site for non commercial reasons. This can be for a personal photo album, personal resume online or used to register their given name to use for email purposes. You can find many places offering cheap domain names and these are the best way to get your own domain name. After that you just need an affordable web hosting solution.

Corporate domain registration

This is for the companies like Pepsi (Pepsi.com), Dell (dell.com) and CNN (cnn.com). They are registering the domain names as a corporation to use for corporate branding. In today's world all businesses need to be on the web so you need a web domain name that matches your brand name.

What is the difference then between personal web name registration and corporate domain registration. Just the end use of the domain. The same website domain name cost the same and can be had with a number of cheap domain registration service providers.

The cost of Domains can vary based on the Top Level Domain (TLD) extension you choose. When you register corporate domains, you will likely register the .com extension, and for local branding you may register a .ca extension for a business owner living in Canada. Domains for personal use can be many domain extensions, but even for personal registrations .com is the first choice. The newly popular .Me extension is being used to register personal domains.

Whether its corporate or personal reasons you are registering your domain name, find the low cost domain name provider that offers a cheap, yet reliable solution. After all, help is needed at times and services offering 24x7 assistance is very helpful after you have registered your domain name, for personal or corporate reasons.