First Website: what you need
Starting out a website involves a few main ingredients that you need, as well as many optional pieces. In this article, we will discuss the essentials you need to at least be viewable on the internet. Main components are having a domain name and web hosting for your files, the actual physical files like HTML, that make up the design of the page and the option to secure your content against non encrypted attacks. Let’s take a look.
Domain Names
To help people browsing the web to remember how to get back to your site, you need a domain name. A memorable domain name is something like google.com, which everyone knows. Upon getting your initial site up and running, you could choose the route of a cheap domain name provider to help start your web business. These companies almost always provide similar features to the big companies and are a great alternative.
Web Site Hosting
You need a location to store your web site files. No matter what type of content you are displaying, including images or PDF files, they have to be accessible on a computer server that is always on. This is where an affordable web hosting solution comes into play. At a price of five dollars or less a month, you can normally get an inexpensive hosting solution that will host your sites files.
Web Site Design
The web site is comprised of files, including HTML files, Image files, Videos or Flash. A web developer can create this for you or you will do it yourself. The better the skills of the person doing it, the better your site will look like. Web hosting sitebuilders or Dreamweaver may be used to get your site up and running quickly. Again, the tools used will be directly related to quality.
Secure Hosting (Optional)
Many sites use a brochure style setup with static data, so the need for optional secured hosting is not a requirement. If your site is collecting information such as credit card data, then you will need to looking into buying ssl certificate for your website to ensure your visitors data is protected. With collecting any credit card info or sensitive data, you must use a web certificate to make your site change from http to https. The https is what makes the data encrypted when sent over the internet so people cannot abuse the information being transmitted. It is a necessity for these sites, but not for regular sites.
Those are four basics you need to start any web site and will get you started. You then need to decide what additional components you may need to also include in your web site package.