Sunday, November 14, 2010

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.

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