It’s common for anyone venturing into having their own online blog, eShop or Corporate Web Presence to be confused between a domain name with web hosting. However, it’s very important for you to be clear on the difference before you move forward in hosting your very first website.

So What is a Domain Name ?

A domain name, is like the address of your home; web hosting on the other hand, is the space of your house where you place your furniture.

Instead of street name and area code, set of words or/and numbers are used for the website’s naming’. The same goes with hosting, computer hard disk and computer memory are used instead of instead of wood and steel for storing as well as processing data files.

Definitions

Domain Name

When you register a domain, it gives you sole ownership and rights to the name of your site. No one else in the market has the access to the actual name of that particular domain besides you. (Keep in mind you’ll need to renew your domain, before the allocated term has ended.)

However, just because you have a domain does not mean that you can server a website to the world. To run a website, you will need a domain name, and a configured web server to put up a website.

Web Hosting

Web Hosting is normally known as a service that provides web server (where you will store your files, management systems, emails and data at), along with its network connections, configurations, and its maintenance.

If you’d like to know more about the different types of web hosting services, click here .

Doesn’t a Domain Name and a Web Hosting Service come together ?

Well, at certain times, Internationally Listed Domains, such as a .CN (China), .IN (India), .CA (Canada), .SG(Singapore) etc. require you to register with their various NICs or their select Partner Registrar separately.

It basically depends on your preference in terms of billing/payment and the pre-requisites listed by both the Domain Provider and the Web Hosting Provider.

Here’s wishing you an excellent start to your foray into the Internet !

You choice of web host depends on how demanding your web application is, and how much traffic you expect.

“Shared Hosting” – which is what you are getting via GoDaddy and our future 9Dome and Zeta*Dome Services, is the most economical in the hierarchy of web hosting service, albeit excellent solutions for Domain Hosting. This can be very economical for small web sites (those with under 1,000 visits per day). There are many providers including DreamHost, and other smaller companies. Make your decision based on cost, reliability, and support of the application platform you want to use [expect under $10-15/month].

“Premium/Extended Shared Hosting” – Which is what you are getting with our SIMPLY HADDAD – Web Hosting Services and other CPanel Based services, are similar to the “Shared Hosting” Services, but with the provision of a Control Panel, more Disk-Space (i.e. without Overselling/Limitation Clauses), Extended but Usable Bandwidth and added Functionality such as Add-On Domains, eMail Functionality, Subdomains, etc. .For example, our Web Hosting Services include LiteSpeed Tech. for those using L.A.M.P. (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Systems.

“Virtual Private Hosting” – This next level of service, provided by RackSpace, Slicehost, SoftLayer, Hivelocity and others, guarantees you a higher level of service, bandwidth, and control of your server environment. If you need to install custom applications, and directly control your operating system configuration, you’ll want at least this level of service. This is a good solution for web sites under 10,000 visits per day and configurations where multiple servers are needed; expect to pay in the $40/mo range per server.

“Dedicated Hosting” – gives you exclusive use to your own server. Most hosts have a manual provisioning process that can take 24 hours to setup your hardware. But then you have complete control and exclusive use of that resource. Depending on your application complexity, you can serve up to 100,000’s of daily visitors from a single server. More complex applications may require multiple front-end web servers, and one or more back-end database servers. Expect to pay $50-$100/mo per CPU, plus bandwidth charges and additional service charges.

Amazon EC2 gives you a dedicated machine, but offers the flexibility to provision one of more machines very rapidly (and even go up and down as demand changes). Pricing starts at about $80/mo per CPU. If you need the flexibility to scale your application as demand grows, EC2 is a great choice. You will likely find less expensive hosting dedicated hosting options, but with much slower turn around time on changing your configurations or adding machines.

Google’s AppEngine service. While not a generalized hosting model, AppEngine provides a different level of Cloud Computing that scales automatically when your demand goes up. Applications have to be written specifically for AppEngine (in the Python programming language, today), but the popular Django framework is supported.

Source(s):
McKoss from Mahalo.com
AppEngine Pricing Proposal – http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20080527_google_io.html

Alright, now you’ve got your Domain Hosting and Web Host set. You’ve looked through what your web-host is giving you in return for your hard-earned cash. Wait you didn’t? My my…

3. Web Hosting Continued

Well a little tip, do look through what you are going to get with your web host, and the deals you’d be receiving from them.

Most of the web-hosts these days will give lots of freebies and excellent facilities, such as MySQL servers, Unlimited Bandwidth or at least something that is high enough for your cause, Installation Utilities, Email Addresses and more.
Please don’t demand for unlimited bandwidth unless you really need it (Some Web-Hosts are renown for “Overselling”, We’ll delve into this shortly). A typical Small Business would usually need up to a max of 1-2GB a month, for normal usage with a hit range of close to 20,000-30,000 a month.

That is if you do not host massive amounts of multimedia and/or an extensive Social Networks Profile.
But if you do get a Web-host, who’d be willing to give you unlimited bandwidth, CAREFULLY JUMP at the opportunity (i.e. Read the Terms of Agreements) before you jump, but if you don’t, 3-5GB per month will do you just fine. And if after awhile you find you need more, just put in a request. Most web-hosts will be glad to assist in extending your plan, or even providing you with a more suitable plan once your website matures.

Now with the Web-hosting issue out of the way, and you’ve registered your all-important Web Domain Name, you’d have to follow the procedures to set your DNS properly, I’m not going into great detail into this section for the moment.

You can always seek advice from your Web Host for information on how to configure your Web Domain Name, DNS. (A Tutorial for this will be coming up soon)

Now all’s set, and you’re ready to go!

WRONG!

4. To Design or not to Design…

More research mate. You now have to find out, what you would like to accomplish with your website. If you’re about to go for a Business or Corporate Web Presence, leave it to the experts from the very beginning.

Start searching around for a Web Designer and/or Developer, they’d be able to give you the options and give you several designs to choose from.
They’d be able to assess your Computer Know-How and suggest a suitable solution. Not all products are suitable for all types of Computer Users. They’d be able to assess whether you’re a Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced PC/Mac User. At least that’s what we do !

But look through the designers work and their experience.

Look through the relevant links they have provided and after-sales support, such as Support Emails, Live Chat Systems and/or Telephone Support.
Look at the design firms expertise, some are great with PHP and Content Management Systems, others provide more Multimedia Enriched Content (i.e. Silverlight and Flash) sites, and some try to merge both. So, I guess what we’re saying is do a bit of research.

Look at their Designs. If you find their designs are not close to what you would like to achieve for your Company/Business or Firm. Halt and ask the design firm for their honest opinion whether they’d be able to give you a design that’ll match your needs. They would be able to gauge and give an honest opinion or might even direct you to their work that fits your criteria.

5. HTML, PHP, CMS, JAVA … AGHHH (Part 1)

Alright if you’re not going for a Business-end model, but just a friendly space, so that all your friends and colleagues can see you and your delighted family over the web. Or you’re just publishing your latest thesis on the “Molecular Fragmentation of Isotopes in a Gamma Field?!?!” look at the Open Source market. Some examples would be Mambo, Wordpress and other Content Management Systems.

Do your research, check out sites that are using the system too. For example, go and search around for Wordpress Sites, not the freebie ones, Hosted Wordpress Sites. Checkout their designs, and the ease in which you can enter your Journal or Blog. For example, if you research into Wordpress enough, you’d be able to find out you can use Flock or even Microsoft Live Writer with Wordpress. So you can blog offline and publish later all without even opening your web browser.

REASEARCH!

Business – Start-Ups Not Using Tech.

“…Many are in the red, yet only 5 per cent see need to embrace technology…”

Article from the Today Newspaper (Singapore), 21st March 2008, Pg 28.

Well, we’ve heard it many times before… “Hey Guys! I want a website…”.

Yes well, it must seem obvious, why we get this question alot…

Well for all of you out there, we have come up with some tips and some “no brainers” in the web design/hosting platform to get you started…

Well you’ve gotta begin somewhere, so let us start of with Tips #1.

We shall go through the first step towards creating your dreams, your desires, and a whole new load of blood, sweat and typing!

1. ASK YOURSELF THE “WHATS ?” AND THE “WHOS ?”

What would you like to put on your website ? and Who would you want to see the massive amount of info you are going to put up on your website.

Once you have got that figured out, you’re ready to roll with the idea’s that should be flowing through your cranium.

Alright now since you got your idea’s in perspective.. “somewhat”, now, you would have to scroll through the web with multiple clicks here and there to find a “Domain Host”.

2. WHAT IS A DOMAIN HOST ?

Well basically a domain is the www.mynameorwebsite.com . This step is crucial and most of the time overlooked.

Find a name that represents you and would be easy for people to identify with and remember. “The Stick Factor” is what i call it personally.

If you have a long domain name that just doesn’t make sense, most of the time people either won’t remember it or will find difficult in typing it.

Take time and look through the Whois.net or Whois.com directory. Read some of your favorite books to get ideas. Once you’ve found one, register the domain !

3. NEXT, YOUR WEB-HOSTING,

There are many web-hosts out there, depending on where you live and which continent you wish to attract the values of each web-host would be different.

Let us put it to you this way, if you are selling fruits and your business resides in lets say, “Japan”.
And you are exporting most of your fruits to … hmm… “Australia” for instance (i.e. Most of your business comes from Australia).
Would you set up a storefront in “Japan”?
Of course not ! You would export you apples and oranges to Australia.
Same thing with a webhost, if your client base is in the United States, find a webhost with servers located in the US.
Why ? Technically speaking, your clients would find that the speed to load your website will be relatively faster.

**Note : If you’re planning on a Colo-Service for your Server, you might want to find one locally. The above applies for Shared/VPS and Dedicated Hosting.

Alright, if you have read through the previous two paragraphs and all you wanted were tips on how to set-up a personal wordpress.com blog, sorry to have wasted your time thus far.

But you may want to look at domain forwarding addresses … for example if you have a wordpress address, won’t it be cool to have www.yourname.com be redirected to your wordpress blog. We’ll be discussing the various ways you can do this shortly.

We’ve recently noticed that most websites, that have Flash Designed Movies or Pages seem to get skipped by most Users.

Most are either annoyed by the long loading time, or basically the complicated navigation of the Flash Site.

This is a result that we’ve noticed for quite awhile now.

It seems that if you add a Flash-Enabled Frontpage, most likely Users would skim right through and click the “pleasure inducing”- “Skip Now” placeholder or button.

There are ways to get the attention of the User with Flash-Frontpages. How you ask ?

We will be authoring an article about different techniques that can be used.