Getting started on-line
25th August 2009
Introduction
To get started one line, the three initial acquisitions you need to make are; the domain name, the website itself and website hosting. I will now go on to discuss these areas in greater detail to help give you an understanding of what you should be looking for.
Domain Names
The domain name is what defines your website from others on the web, after all, it is the name of your website. Websites are filed under their domain names on the World Wide Web to allow direct access via the address bar at the top of your Internet browser. For example, Google’s domain name is simply www.google.co.uk.
Your websites domain name is important, as this is the address that you will pass on to customers or clients you happen to meet if you want to direct them onto your website. It’s a good idea to make it as memorable and easy to spell as possible, so try to avoid rare or obscure words that may come back to bite you in the future.
There are many different types of domain names, each with a different suffix, some of the more popular domain names in the UK being ‘.co.uk’ and ‘.com’. Others are available too, but I would only really advise you focus on these two for now if you are targeting the UK market.
To help your website rank high in popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo, I would also advise the use of key business word/words within the domain name that the customer or client is likely to search for. This will give you an added edge over your competitors in the industry which could lead to greater success in the future.
The Website
Obviously, the main reason you are reading this article is because you have shown some interest in learning more about websites and what is required to get one on-line. I will now go onto discuss the website itself and what you may require to meet your needs.
Styles and trends are constantly changing on the web as it’s a fast paced environment. One thing for sure, is that a website should always be clear to read and understand as well as being easily accessible and simple to navigate. There’s nothing worse than a badly built website, it can often put off potential customers meaning you would have been better off without one in the first place.
I like to split websites up into two categories, one for static websites and the other for dynamic websites.
Static websites are often more simple to construct and are commonly used for showcasing/on-line brochures or to just display simple information about a company or organisation. They generally contain text and images that are build into the design hence the term static. In these instances, technologies such as XHTML and CSS are used to construct them to modern day web standards.
Dynamic websites take the static models foundations and build on them. Dynamic websites are mainly used on larger scale projects which allow the user to generate data, information or images etc on demand by making the most of server side scripting. Two popular server side scripting languages are PHP and ASP which both in essence do the same job, it just depends which one is better suited to the developer or project in hand. Dynamic websites often make use of back end databases that run on the server to store all the necessary content for the website. The server side scripting language helps communicate between the website and the database, allowing the content to be sourced on demand by the user.
E-commerce (on-line shopping) makes use of dynamic websites, where all the products information, such as price and description are stored in the back end database. This information can easily be updated and this is one of key the reasons dynamic websites are used for this type of project.
Web Hosting
The final piece of the jigsaw is the hosting. Once the website is built, it needs to be stored somewhere where it can be accessible to everyone on the Internet. People often refer to hosting as web space, as it is used to store websites on-line.
People often overlook web hosting and just go for the cheapest option. They don’t take into account the speed of their website, or reliability of the server it is hosted on. Some companies offering ridiculously cheap prices often abuse their web space by cramming more websites onto a server than their capabilities permit. This is often referred to as ‘overselling’ as they work on the assumption that not every website will use their maximum resources up meaning they can fit more websites onto the server, hence the cheaper prices. This can dramatically hamper website performance and can infuriate users due to slow load times and sluggish responses.