How to get your Website on the Internet
This guide is meant to teach you the very basics of getting a website online. It assumes that you have already created a website and now want to put it up on the internet for everyone to see. I was in this very situation just recently, but as you can obviously tell, not anymore! This is going to be a very simple and non-technical guide on how to get your website online. I found that most of the guides I found on the internet were either overly complicated, or focused solely on one aspect of the process. This left me searching for guides on the other parts. Now lets get started. The process basically comes down to three steps:
Register a Domain
So as you can see, the first step to getting your website on the net is getting a domain. A domain is pretty much the name of the website. The domain of this website, for example, is adamsiembida.com. To get a domain you need to register the name with a domain name registrar. These are companies which basically keep track of all the domains and make sure no one can have the same one. All you do is go to the domain name registrars website (I used godaddy.com) and follow their instructions which are usually as simple as typing in the domain name you want to register and putting in your credit card info. Registering a domain is usually not very expensive; it only cost me $10 for a year on godaddy.com. You need to pay this fee every year, otherwise your ownership of the domain will expire and someone else can register it for themselves.
There is, however, a certain problem that goes along with registering a domain. Lots and lots of people have been registering domains for their websites too. Some people even register domains that they think people will want, and later sell it to you for much, much more than $10. That means most of the very simple or nice names have already been taken. Make sure that when you chose your domain name it is something you like and don't plan on changing. If later you end up changing your domain, it causes big problems for search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) and your website won't show up in the search results anymore. Also, anyone who put a link leading to your website will have to update it or it won't work anymore. So choose wisely and be creative when coming up with the name!
Getting a Hosting Service
OK. So now that you have gone through the ordeal of trying to find a domain you want that's not already taken, the next step is to find a host for your website. A host is somebody who runs servers (computers that store and send your website to people trying to access it) for you. It's possible to host your website from your own computer, but that's for a whole other article would require you to have your computer up and running 100% of the time. If you ever turned your computer off, nobody would be able to access your page anymore. This is why you pay a hosting company to do it on their computers for you. Hosting a basic website is not very expensive. Plans for low traffic websites usually range from only $5 to $10 per month.
So you are probably wondering which hosting company I use. At the time of writing this I use asmallorange.com to host my website. When you register a domain at godaddy.com they will also offer you cheap hosting, but I don't recommend their hosting services. There will be a bunch of different options to choose from when you sign up for a hosting account. Here is a quick rundown of some of the more common terms.
- Disk space: the total amount of space your website and files can take up on the server.
- Monthly bandwidth: the total amount of data your server can send per month. In other words, if you have a picture that is 1 MB, every time someone downloads that picture will be 1 MB of bandwidth. Bandwidth is usually measured in GB where one GB is 1000 MB.
- Shared hosting account: This means you will share the server with other people. You will not be able to see or modify each others files because each person has their own folder that only they can access.
- Linux/Windows server: The operating system that the server runs on. This does not make much difference for a basic user. Unless your needs are very specific, most should work. If it actually does make a difference for you, then you will most likely know how to choose.
- PHP: Lets you create dynamic web pages. It is (very non-technically) almost like letting your web page run simple programs. This should be included in most hosting plans for free.
- Database: Similar to a spreadsheet, it stores data that your website can access.
- MySql: A popular type of database that is used by many websites.
When you sign up for a hosting account they send you an email that will tell you what their nameservers are. You need to copy down the nameservers they give you and go back to godaddy.com (or whichever registrar you used) and there will be an option to use your own nameservers. Submit the ones you got from your hosting company. Once you do this, anyone who types in your domain into their web browser will be taken to your page. If you try this now you will most likely you will be taken to a default page your hosting company automatically puts up for you until you upload your own website to them. This leads us to the final step.
Uploading your Website
Note: This step will vary based on your hosting company. Hosting companies are usually good at explaining how to upload your website, so you might be able to skip this section and read the hosting company's instructions instead of mine. There are two main ways to get your website uploaded to the hosting company's server. Most hosting companies will give you an online control panel to manage your website, and the control panels almost always include a link you can click to take you to an online file browser. This works almost identically to looking through folders on your own computer, except that those folders are actually on the server. You can then look for an upload button and it will let you upload your files to the desired folder. The other option that works better for large amounts files is using a ftp client. These are a type of programs that let you browse the files on the server and upload files from your own computer. Setting up an ftp client usually involves typing in the domain of your website, your user name from your hosting company, your password, and changing the mode to sftp. Two free and popular ftp clients are FileZilla and Core FTP Light.
Once you are connected to the server, all you need to do is upload the files for your website into the correct folder. On a Linux server the folder is usually going to be called public_html. On a Windows server this folder is usually called htdocs. These are the folders ANYONE on the web will be able to access, so be careful what you put in there! Once you have put your website in there, it should immediately be up and running. Type the domain of your website you registered in step 1 into your browser and your website should pop up. Congratulations, you are done!
If you have any questions or suggestions then feel free to leave them in the comments section below.
adam.siembida@gmail.com
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