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Behind the Scenes of Setting up a Website
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Adam Mcleod October 30, 2006
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Taking the plunge and deciding to set up a website can be a daunting
process if you aren't already experienced in domain purchasing, hosting
requirements, dns delegation etc. In this article I am going to attempt
to familiarize you with some of the concepts and clarify some of the
jargon.
There are quite a few manual configuration requirements to get a
domain even started in the right direction of being available to the
public. Three things have to be considered initially to secure your
virtual block of dirt. The three requirements are as follows.
1. Your initial and ongoing cost to own the domain name of your choice subject to availability.
2. Who is going to host the website for you and the ongoing costs associated with having your site hosted.
3. Domain Name Redirection. A service that can answer requests to
resolve your domain name to the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the
computer hosting your website.
Domain name pricing varies and for initial registration of a new
domain you can get it quite cheap. Once you've found the best priced
domain reseller to purchase your domain name from it is best to buy as
many years in advance as you can. If you purchase a domain name for one
year for $7.95, when it comes time to renew that domain the price is
suddenly $24.95.
Hunt around for the best hosting package you can get. Depending on the
size of your site and expected traffic hosting packages can be
purchased from as little as $5.95 US per month. Some of the cheap
packages include massive bandwidth allocations. Make sure your host
uses CPanel. CPanel is a graphical Server Management tool making
configuration of your domain a matter of pointing and clicking.
To save money on ongoing hosting fee's, hunt around for a free DNS Service Provider. One in particular is http://freedns.afraid.org. Sites such as these allow you to add several hostnames to your domain. ie mail.yourdomain.com.
Once you have searched all these avenues and have decided it is in
your budget to move to the next step the first thing to do is to
register your domain. Once you have registered your domain you will
receive emails to your nominated email account with the domain
management login information for your domain. Keep these emails as you
will need that information soon.
Sign up and pay for hosting with the provider on the hosting plan
you chose for cost effectiveness. They will email you your login
information and server IP addresses. Again keep these emails for future
reference.
Now go to your free dns host. Sign up for an account. During the
sign-up process they will notify you of their name server addresses.
Write down these addresses as they are also needed soon. DNS Hosts
require that their name servers respond as authoritative for your domain
before your domain can become active, this requires the name servers
retrieved during the DNS host sign up process be entered into the
domain registrar.
Go back to the emails you received for registering your domain
name. There should be a link in the email to the management section for
your domain. The username and password for the management section will
also be in this email. Click on the link and enter the username and
password. Depending on your host their should be a section related to
Name Servers. Be careful not to select to use your hosting company's
name service hosting unless you already paid for it. When you have the
correct section there will be space for you to enter from four to six
name servers. This is where the name server addresses received from the
Free DNS Host are to be entered.
This tells the backbone internet servers that if you want to find
www.yourdomain.com ask ns1.nameservercompany.com. This change can take
24-48 hours to propogate through the world-wide domain name servers.
Once the world-wide domain servers register that www.yourdomain.com
is now pointed to your free dns hosting company as authoritive you will
be able to specify the IP address of the actual machine that will host
your web pages. This IP address will have been in the email you
received from your hosting company. This IP address should be added for
the domain prefixes mail www ftp smtp and any others that may have been
specified in the email from your hosting company.
Your domain is now pointing to your hosting provider and the behind
the scenes redirection process is taken care of. You are now ready to
start building that high rise building on your virtual block of dirt.
There is no limit to how high you can build on your land.
For a ready made, customizable website have a look at Joomla.
Joomla is a reliable PHP based complete website solution. Extensions
are available to customize Joomla in many ways, from an online store to
a virtual community or dating site. It takes time to understand how
Joomla works but once you get the hang of it you will realise how
invaluable it is.
My site http://www.bizebooks.com.au
has two packages containing complete website scripts and utilities. The
best part with these scripts is that after you use them to build your
site you can resell them and make money from them. Two products in
particular I recommend are The AX Gold Webmasters Toolkit and
Scripts2Sell. Search for them on the site and have a look at some of
the scripts in these packages.
Have a look today.
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