Websites 101

When you first start thinking about setting up a web page, it's easy to get confused about the different companies and/or services involved. We offer a brief introduction below; for a more thorough, step-by-step guide, see How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide from thesitewizard.com, which offers many other helpful guides for beginners as well.

The Players: Who Does What?

Domain Registrar: the company that sells you the rights to use a domain name (“www.mydomain.com”). 

Web Host: the company that gives your domain a home on the Internet (i.e. makes it “live”).

ISP: the company that pipes the internet to your house.  Your ISP has nothing to do with your web domain, although, like a web host, they do usually provide basic email service as part of the ISP package (e.g. myname@comcast.net or myname@verizon.net).

It is quite common to use the same company as your domain’s registrar as well as its host, but it is not necessary. In fact, some would tell you that it’s not desirable, as it may give one single company more power over your website than you might like.

Domain Registration

When you register a domain name, you are purchasing the rights to use that name for a certain period of time, usually one or more years.  Domain names must be renewed when they are nearing expiration in order to keep the right to the name.  It usually costs $10 or less to register a name for a year.

Domain Hosting

Registering a domain name is only the first step in creating a website.  In order to be useful, your domain name needs a way to make itself known on the web.  This is called “hosting” your domain.  It’s perfectly possible to register a name without hosting it; this is sometimes called “parking” a domain, and your domain registrar may impose a small fee for doing it.  However, you can’t do anything with your parked domain until you host it somewhere.

Web hosts provide a whole set of services, but the two most important are email and web page hosting. Just because you have both of these services available doesn’t mean you have to use them; you may choose to host a web page on your domain, but continue to use an email address you already have, such as one provided by your ISP (e.g. myaccount@comcast.net  or a free email address at Yahoo or Gmail etc.)  Likewise, you may choose simply to create an email address (or several), but never put a web page up.  If this is the case, you might want to look for an email-only package that is cheaper than a full hosting package.

Email:  The host’s mail server is the machine that actually sends and receives (“serves”) email for you.  When you set up an email account in a program such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, or Thunderbird, the program will ask for your incoming and outgoing server name.  Sometimes these are the same, such as “mail.yourdomain.com,” but sometimes the incoming and outgoing are different, such as “pop3.mydomain.com” and “smtp.mydomain.com.”  Your webhost provides the correct server information.

Web Page Hosting:  The web host provides a certain amount of space on its computer (usually referred to as a server), where you store your web page files.  When someone enters the address of one of your web pages, the host “serves” that page up – provides it to the requesting computer.