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A web site is always a fun thing to think about, but if you are new to the web world, there are a lot of things you should know. Let's start with the basics. There are four main things you will need to have in place in order to get your web site off the ground: Domain, Hosting, SSL Certificate, & Design. It might be easier to think of these like a car, a garage, the lock, and an address. Your car (website/design), is parked or stored in a garage (hosting), the garage is locked and protected (SSL Certificate), and people can find it by going to the address of the garage (domain). In order to understand them more in detail, please see below for a complete breakdown.

Domain

The Domain name is the address of your website www.___.__ This is very important as it is the identity of your site. You want something that is generally easy to spell and remember and that reflects your company, product, organization, or identity. You also need to decide what domain suffix you want (com, net, org, biz, etc.). Generally speaking, .com is for commercial sites, .org is for organizations, .biz is for businesses, and .net is for networks. .edu is always reserved for education/school based sites. You want to make sure your suffix matches the work that you do. Most Domain Names (depending on the suffix) will cost a little less than $10-15 a year to operate. Of course, you also need to make sure that the name you want is available. Let us know if we can help you with that! You can search for available domains through any webhosting company - or Contact Us, and we will be happy to help you with this process!

Hosting

The next thing to consider is hosting. Your website needs to reside on a server so that computers can access it and people view it. There are several different types of hosting, each have their own pros and cons (these are all assuming you want to hire a company to host your site and you don't want to self-host/monitor your own server-this is not recommended unless you know what you are doing!).

Shared:

Shared hosting allows you to share space on a server with a bunch of other clients that the company has. The benefits of this are that it is usually very cheap as you are sharing the resources with an unknown number of people. The downside is that you are sharing the resources with an unknown number of people. If someone is using up a lot of the resources, it could cause your site to be slow or non-responsive. Shared hosting is often a good start (and the best choice) for small websites and those starting out in the web world. Average cost for a decent shared hosting plan is $5.99-$7.99 a month.

Dedicated:

Dedicated hosting gives you one server for your website. Only your website (and any other sites) that you put on it will go on it. That means you have full use of all of the servers speed, memory, bandwidth, etc. This is especially important for large sites or sites that have a lot of private information stored on them. The downside to dedicating hosting is that it is much more expensive than shared hosting because you have to pay for all of the server costs-not just a portion of it. You usually get more features and more access to the server in a dedicated hosting plan than you would with a shared hosting plan, but unless you know what you are doing with them, it may be a moot point. Average cost for a dedicated hosting plan is usually $60-$300 a month.

Virtual Dedicated:

A Virtual Dedicated server is somewhat of a hybrid between a shared hosting and a dedicated hosting package. It separates a portion of a server and its resources for your use (and only your use), while the rest of the server's resources are shared. While this is a bump up from shared hosting (it is more reliable for medium websites and heavier database websites), it is almost better for someone looking at this option to take the leap and go for a cheap dedicated hosting package. Average cost for a virtual hosting plan is usually $30-$100 a month.

Cloud Hosting:

It seems that everything is going to ""Cloud"" technology today, including servers! These hosting packages allow you to customize your needs, and allow you to change them as needed. They put your files across a cloud of servers sharing those resources with multiple servers and multiple accounts. While they can be tailored to fit your needs and budgets, they are not recommended for large sites or sites with a lot of private information/databases as the security is still an issue that many have raised. There is no average cost for cloud hosting as it depends on your needs.

SSL Certificate

An Secure Socket Layer (SSL Certificate) acts as a way of protecting the user's information. It encrypts the data sent to and from the server to prevent hackers from stealing the data. When a site has an SSL certificate active, you will see a small locked padlock your browser's bar, and your site will start with ""https"" instead of ""http"" (this stands for hyper text transfer protocol secure). Some SSL certificates will even change the bar to green. It used to be that SSL certificates were only required for sites that store Credit Card Information. However, things have changed and now all sites are encouraged to have them (Google even dings you if you don't, and many browsers will flash a warning if you don't have one!). There are many different types of SSL certificates. They can range from free to several hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year (depending on encryption levels and other features). Rest assured, unless your site is selling something, or is storing client information, a free SSL certificate is probably all you will need. Your hosting company can usually install this for you for free - many hosting packages now include an SSL certificate!

Conclusion

Building a website has a lot of steps, but if you understand the basics of a website, it can make those steps (and the costs) more manageable and easier to plan for! Of course, just like having a great mechanic, it pays to have a great website developer to guide you through this process and bring your vision to fruition! We would be honored to work with you! Please Contact Us and let's get started today!