Web site services and three steps to a web site

The information age is upon us and today there's no going back, the web is here to stay

There are 3 main components to bringing a web site live.

Registering a Domain Name –
Selecting the right domain name is extremely important. This is your identity and how you are found on the Internet. The domain name should be short (if possible) and easy to remember. It also should reflect your business name in full or part. Domain name registration can be done through several companies over the Internet. You need to purchase a one year registration and consider a longer term. We recommend 3 - 5 year registrations rather than renewing yearly. The reason for this is what if you forget to renew your registration and your name gets taken by someone else? Keep things simple! Get a 3-5 year contract and you won't have to worry about renewing for a while.

All sites are registered with ICANN. This is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is a non-profit international organization responsible for domain names management.

Domain name addresses are in 3 parts:

Part one is www. This means World Wide Web.
Part two is the name of the site.
Part three is the suffix group such as .com, .org, .net or .gov.

com - Originally stood for "commercial," to indicate a site that could be used for private, commercial purposes, but now is the best well known top level domain and used for a wide variety of sites;

net - Intended for site related to the Internet itself, later for internal networks, but now it is used for a wide variety of sites;

org – Was originally intended for non-commercial "organizations," but organizations now use it for a wide variety of sites;

gov - Used for U.S. Government sites only.

Hosting Services – This is a computer that will serve or host your web site to the World Wide Web. Just think of it as renting office space, your Web site needs to be hosted somewhere so people can reach it. Your web site resides on a server (a computer serving many people and other computers). We feel that it is costly to go out and purchase your own hosting server, so it is easier to just rent space on someone else's server. When you purchase server space/hosting services from a company, they may give you the IP address or server name for the computer which will be serving your web site. You then need to tell your domain name manager this information. With a hosting site you don’t have to also go out and buy expensive system software to manage the server. This alone can be a considerable cost savings.

Development and Design of your Web Site – The architecture of the site needs to be built. It is important that an appropriate look and feel be designed for your site. The copy needs to be written for each page along with the desired images that will be displayed. Web pages can consist of one page to an unlimited number of pages. When designing your page think about what will sell your business and get that customer to contact you. Remember that most people spend only a short time looking at a web page, so keep it simple and to the point. Once your page(s) are designed, it’s time to put that information into HTML code. HTML code (Hypertext Markup Language) is a coded format language used for creating hypertext documents (your web pages) on the World Wide Web. This code will control how your web pages appear and respond to viewing your site.