Category Archives: Websites

What You Really Need To Know About Web Hosting

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Goldfish in Aquarium

Goldfish are like website files. They need to be housed somewhere. © Photo: Jelene / Flickr

Just like your computer files are stored on your hard drive or back up disk, your website information needs to be stored somewhere. This storage service is provided by a website host. A website host rents out space on their computer servers to webmasters like you who need to store (or “host”) their files and make their website available 24 hours, 7 days a week. To go back to the real estate analogy, your domain name is your shingle, your website is your shop where you display your goods and services, and your hosting service is the landlord who rents you the store space to house all of your data.

Additional Services

Besides server space, a good web hosting service will also offer other web services, such as domain name purchase, email accounts, online file storage for your personal files, and more. Some popular web hosting services include Blue Host, Host Monster, Dreamhost, and GoDaddy, but there are many others. In France, try 1and1, or explore the ones listed here. One of the simplest solutions is to set up your site with WordPress, like we did. We’ll talk more about this in future posts.

DIY Hosting

Multiple racks of servers

Web Servers. Can your home computer do all this? Image via Wikipedia.

Is it possible to be your own landlord and save on the rent by hosting your own site? Sure–if you’re willing to learn  all about computer servers, programming, and DNS and are willing to install back-up computers in case yours dies. In short, maintaining your server–just like maintaining your own property–requires knowledge and an investment of time, and yes, even money. Second computers and back-up disks don’t come cheap!

Uh oh!

I bet the idea of paying for hosting suddenly seems more appealing, right?

Free vs. Paid Hosting

Some services offer free hosting in exchange for placing ads on your site. Although this might sound tempting, be cautious of free web hosting and free websites. They frequently come with ads that you can’t control for goods or services you might not approve of. Further, if those ads are in the form of flashing banners, annoying popups, or videos or sounds that play automatically, they could drive your customers away. For the relatively low price of paid hosting, your website will gain exponentially in professionalism and polish.

Disk Space and Bandwith

When shopping for a web host, the two things you need to consider are disk space and bandwith.

Disk space (or storage space) is the amount of space a web  hosting company is prepared to rent to you. Think of this as the square footage of your shop. Basic websites don’t need very much space at all. Start with your host’s standard package until you have a better picture of your needs. You can always upgrade to a more expensive plan if you run out of space.

Bandwith is the average rate at which your data is transferred. In other words, it’s a measure of the flow of traffic per month to your website. If you have lots of visitors or huge files such as videos that visitors can download, you will use more bandwith than if you have fewer visitors and only small text files. If your website is relatively small, has only text files, and doesn’t yet have a lot of visitors, you really won’t be using much bandwidth at all.  If you think the traffic to your site could be significant, you may want to choose a plan with more bandwith. Again, you can start low and upgrade if need be.

Hosting Large Files (Videos)

You can opt to host large files, such as videos, on your website. Or you can host them on a web hosting platform, such as YouTube, and embed them in your website.

Hosting videos on your own site makes sense if you want to charge people to view them or want to otherwise control who can view them when. Just remember that larger files may require more bandwith.

Otherwise, if your videos are meant to be open to the public, the simpler solution is to upload them to a free service such as YouTube, and then simply copy and paste the embed code in your website. We’ll cover how to do this in a future post. Right now, all you need to know is that unless you’re hosting videos on your own site–that is, actually uploading them and storing them on your web host’s servers–you can start with your web host’s basic hosting package.

Recap: The 6 Points to Keep in Mind When Looking for a Web Host 

  1. Web Hosting Is Required - You can’t run a website without hosting your files somewhere.  If you want your own storefront on the Internet, you will need to pay the yearly rent.
  2. Free Means Ads - Free web hosting providers make their money by selling ad space on your website to third parties. These ads can make your site look cheap and unprofessional.
  3. Think Basic - Hosting doesn’t need to be expensive. Unless you are hosting your own videos, photographs, or other large files, you don’t need much space. (Remember, you can always upload your videos to YouTube or your photos to Flickr and then embed them on your website.)
  4. 24/7 Support - You want your website to be available 24/7, so you want the  support team to also be available 24/7. Make sure you check this before you choose your host.

    Web Hosting Customer Service Fail

    Web Hosting Customer Service Fail (Photo credit: johnscotthaydon)

  5. Money Back Guarantee - Many hosts offer a 30-day money back guarantee. If you want to try a service but aren’t sure if they’re a good fit, a guarantee might be a good selling point.
  6. Check Reviews - Do your research before you commit to a host by checking what other people are saying. Reviews are easy to find on the web. Two good places to look are b2evolution and webhostinggeeks.

Let us know if you have any remaining questions about domain names or web hosting. Next week, we move on to blogs.

Domain Names for Newbies

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In our last post, we said that your website is like your piece of real estate online. It’s your storefront, the place where you hang your shingle.

Today we’re going to address the shingle itself: your domain name.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is the unique address that you choose for your website. Our domain name for this blog, for example, is twopointuhoh.com. It’s usually the name of your business—like the shingle you’d find on a traditional brick and mortar business. Some more examples of domain names are:

  • google.com
  • facebook.com
  • wikikpedia.org

Domain Names and IP Addresses

Domain names provide a user-friendly address to your website that’s easy to remember. Website creators like them because they help build brand identity, and users like them because they make finding websites a cinch. Unfortunately, the computers that need to know how to direct a user’s request don’t know what to do with domain names. Computers rely on strings of numbers to do their job. But people find it hard to remember or relate to a string of numbers. To solve this problem, we use both. Behind every user-friendly domain name lies the technical IP address that computers can read.

© Photo: alexkerhead / Flickr

IP addresses are unique identifying numbers assigned to every computer on the Internet so that data can be addressed to the right place. Sounds a lot like another shingle, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. The relationship between a domain name and its IP address can be compared to old-fashioned telephone numbers. Once upon a time, a phone number like PEnnsylvania 6-5000 was considered easier for people to remember than the actual phone number, 376-5000. PEnnsylvania 6-5000 was hiding—or masking—the real phone number.

Masking

Domain names mask the cumbersome IP addresses in the same way. While you don’t have to worry about IP addresses, masking is an important concept to understand.

If you use a platform like WordPress or Squarespace, you’ll encounter masking. WordPress has its own domain: wordpress.com. This domain in turn masks an IP address. When a new website is created directly on WordPress, the user is prompted to choose a domain name for their website. That website then appears as part of the larger WordPress domain:

twopointuhoh.wordpress.com

If you’re happy with that, wonderful. You don’t need to do anything else. You have your domain name, congratulations!

But many people feel long domain names are awkward and don’t look good on business cards. It’s considered more professional to have a stand-alone domain name.

Uh oh! What to do?

Purchase the domain name you want, if it’s available, from an authorized domain name registrar, and then set it up to mask your WordPress domain name. This is what we did, and now our domain name appears as twopointuhoh.com and not twopointuhoh.wordpress.com.

In reality, we are now working with three layers: twopointuhoh.com, twopointuhoh.wordpress.com, and the IP address. Just like PEnnsylvania 6-5000 is the same phone number as 376-5000, our three names are the same address expressed in three different ways: people-friendly, WordPress-friendly, and computerese.

Structure of a Domain Name

If you are purchasing your own domain name, you’ll need to know a little bit about domain name structure. Most domain names you’ll be purchasing have two parts, the name you choose, and the extension. For example, the name we chose is twopointuhoh. Our extension is .com.

Names can be freely invented and are only limited by availability. Extensions, however, must be chosen from a list. Among the most popular extensions are:

  • .com (Intended for general purpose use.)
  • .net (Intended for general purpose use.)
  • .org (Intended for use by non-profit organizations: wikipedia.org)
  • .edu (Restricted to use by post-secondary educational institutions in the US: harvard.edu)
  • .biz (Intended for use by businesses)

And in France:

  • .fr (Intended for websites registered in France)

Domain Name Extensions

Why Extensions are Important to Understand

Let’s say your business is coincidentally also called “Two Point Uh Oh” and you want to create a website with a .com extension. You’ll quickly learn that twopointuhoh.com is already taken (sorry!). That’s because domain names are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

Uh Oh! Now what?

You have two options: you can change your name or try a different extension. Alternatives include .info, .net, .org, and regional extensions such as .us, .ca (Canada), .fr (France) .be (Belgium), or .au (Australia). Depending on what your business does and where it’s located, one of these might work.

If you still want the .com extension, however, you’ll need to come up with an acceptable variation on your name. I recently created a website for my cousin’s restaurant, Morning Star Café, which is on Second Avenue in New York City. That domain name was already taken, and since the .com extension seems like the only logical one for a restaurant, we chose MorningStarOnSecond.com.

More Tips on Choosing a Domain Name

© Photo: NatalieMaynor / Flickr

Here are some more things to think about when choosing a domain name:

  • If you’re a freelancer, artist, or a small business owner, your domain name should contain the name of your business or your brand (your own name if that’s you).
  • Try to keep your domain name short yet memorable.
  • Avoid tricky or difficult spellings. Keep your domain name simple for people to find.
  • If you use an extension other than .com, make sure it’s a logical fit for your business.
  • If your desired domain name is already taken, you’ll have to think of a variation.

That covers the basics of domain name selection. If you want to learn more, check out Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name by Christopher Heng of TheSiteWizard.com

Checking Domain Name Availability

Finding out if a domain name is available is easy. Just visit a domain registrar such as GoDaddy.com, DreamHost.Com, or Hover.com. Type in the desired domain name in the domain name search box and you’ll quickly see if it’s available.

Buying a Domain Name

The cost of a domain name is fairly low. Domain names run about $10-$20 (or €8-€15) per year on an annual subscription. You can buy a domain name directly from a web hosting service such as WordPress.com, or through domain name registrars such as GoDaddy.com, DreamHost.Com, or Hover.com. In France, try Gandi.net or 1and1.fr. The process is quick and simple.

With your shingle firmly in hand, you’re now ready to hang it somewhere. Next week, we’ll discuss website hosting. In the meantime, check out this video tutorial on purchasing a domain name. It should clarify a lot of what we’ve covered here. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!

Three Common Website Myths

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If you’ve been following this blog from the beginning, you’ve probably figured out by now that Web 2.0 is all about interaction. But there are so many possible ways to interact, so many places to be present online, that it’s hard to not feel overwhelmed. Where do you start? How do you organize your online presence? With a home base.

In Paris, there is a kilometer marker in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. Considered the center of the city, it is from here that all distances are measured in France.  Your home base is your kilometer zero. All roads will lead from here and back to here.

Your Website Is Your Home Base

©Photo: Serge Melki / Flickr

Your website is your piece of real estate online. This is where you can hang your shingle and let people know who you are and what you do. Your home or welcome page, your service or product page, and the page that tells us about you all serve this task. If you decide to add a blog, you’ll be able to showcase your expertise, take a point of view, and establish a voice—all of which can help you grow a following. If planned well, your blog will become a trusted source of useful information that will entice your target audience to keep coming back. Blogs drive traffic to your website, and they also provide you with content to share on other sites.

My clients often groan when I suggest a website. They’ve either had bad experiences in the past that they don’t want to repeat, or they fear the technology.

Uh oh!

Let me debunk the three most common myths that my clients have:

I can’t afford a website.

© Photo: AMagill / flickr

Most small businesses don’t need fancy or expensive websites. They need a website that is simple and elegant and that works on mobile devices (such as a smartphone or an iPad). There are inexpensive website platforms that allow you to create a basic website without much technical know-how. Most of these platforms have many of the tools you’ll need already built in. This website, for example, uses WordPress and costs us under $20 a year. If you really feel unable to get started on your own, consider hiring a consultant to walk you through the setup. Once you see how it’s done, you’ll be able to take over.

I’m too technologically challenged to run a website.

Between the advance of technology and the boom in website demand, simple, user-friendly options such as WordPress have become the norm for small businesses. You can run a website without any special technical knowledge, and if you have a question, you’ll find answers in your platform’s user support section or in the user forums. An inexpensive way to get over any fear of technology is by hiring a professional to get you started and to train you. That keeps your costs low while empowering you!

© Photo: Search Engine People Blog / flickr

I just want someone else to run my website for me.

Having a great webmaster who knows your business and also knows what they’re doing is a luxury. But if your business requires regular and timely updates, this can get expensive. Your friend who initially set up your website may not be able to drop whatever they’re doing just because you have an urgent request. Don’t be surprised if you have to wait a long time before they are available for you. This means you’ll always have to plan far in advance. If you want your customers to see  your update on the first of March, for example, make sure your webmaster knows about it four weeks before that! Unless you can afford to pay a webmaster, learn how to do it yourself. You will have a lot more flexibility–and fewer headaches!

With these three misconceptions now firmly debunked, you should be ready to roll up your sleeves and start building your website. Next week we’ll be discussing domain names and hosting services. Stay tuned!