Web Hosting Made Simple!

Web hosting and domain names
Today’s technology is evolving at faster and faster speed. Therefor the internet has become a natural part of every company and even for every day usage by the private sector. Everybody has some kind of alias on the web, a Facebook page or a blog were they post updates about their life. Well, what does it take to keep this all together? You need a good web hosting services and a domain name. Many may look at your domain name as you nickname on the web, or your brand if you like. The web hosting services on the other hand is your hard drives on the internet were you can put all your files containing you webpage.

Domain name
The domain name is incredibly important. It’s the name of your webpage, but more important, it’s your brand on the internet. Another reason to pick domain name with care is that it’s hard to switch to another name. If you look at the pure technical part it’s not hard at all, but there’s so much into it. Probably you have done some branding to the name; you might have printed it on business cards or billboards. Some of your clients have (hopefully) memorized it and will write it straight into the browser. Other sites may have put links pointing to yours which won’t work if you change you domain name. The point is; choose domain name with great care.

What’s a domain name??
Normally you use to “example.com” a domain name. And of course it is. But it could also look like “subdomain.example.com/catalog”. As long as you bought the domain “example.com” you could use everything before and after it. For example a good idea is to use m.example.com for your mobile site and www.example.com for your normal desktop website. The possibilities with your domain name are there for endless.

Top level domains (TLD)
Top level domains or TLD’s is the part of your domain name that follows after the punctuation (.com). Does it matter which TLD you’re using? Both yes and no. pure technically thy all work the same. On the other hand your brand might gain from using a .com address (which is the most common by far). It has more trust than a .biz or .net for example. Some other normal choices would be .org for organization or .edu for education. There is a kind of TLD’s called ccTLD’s which are country coded. .us is for the USA, co.uk is the United Kingdom and so on. This is also a good alternative. No matter your purpose you should choose the name of your new online brand with care.

Web hosting services
Now we got a domain name, that’s next? We need to get a web hosting services to tie it to. This is where all your files will be stored for the domain you choose. When you by a hosting service you buy some space on a server connected to the internet. It’s now the hard part comes, you have to configure and design your new site and put it up on the server provided by your hosting company.
When you’re in the position of choosing a web hosting services you need to think about more than getting a good price. You need to think about the support as well. After all, it’s your webpage were talking about! If the server and your page have some down time, it could affect your company and cause losses. A good hosting company hardly has any downtime at all, you wouldn’t even notice, they have special systems to handle it.

The technical part
There are a few technical terms that you must know in order to set up your site. The most used term you need to know is “FTP”, this stands for file transfer protocol and is used to transfer files from your local computer to your domains directories. Every file you upload by FTP will be usable via the web. When you’re logged on the FTP it works as a normal folder on your desktop.
Another great service is the MySQL database. It's used to save information in a table. For example you can have a database over all your clients or maybe one with all your post for your blog. Of cause there are plenty of good and well written guides available on the web describing how to use these services.

Mail accounts
When you buy a domain name you are able to use mail accounts with it. You can use whatever@example.com. The web hosting services will provide you with systems to use your mail on a web bases interface. They will also have information about how you can open and use your account on a desktop client like Outlook or Thunderbird.

Make a good choice
Both domain name and hosting services are incredibly pieces in order to build and design your brand on the internet. Make sure you have a good domain name that you truly like, that’s the nick you and your site forever will be associated with. Even the web hosting services is important, without it – no webpage. Great support and quality is something I can guarantee you’re going to value more than price in the long run.
Good luck with your site!