TAKE CONTROL of your DOMAIN! Part II
If you didn’t read Take Control of Your Domain Part I, it has important information you need to understand regarding your domain. Go read that first and then come back to this one. This post, Take Control of Your Domain Part II deals specifically with the hosting aspect of your website owner experience. Some of this can get pretty technical (so put your nerd cap on and pay attention - heh heh), but it is important to understand when taking control of your domain and your website. And, if you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to drop a comment in below. At the very least it will make my blog seem popular, which is a good thing.
Once you have your domain, you need to find a place to put your web page files (your graphics, web page files, programming things and pretty much everything in your website). This place is called your “host.”
Your web page files sit on a server. A server is, simply put, a computer. This computer has special software or programs on it that allow other computers (servers) to access and view your files.
Your hosting company, or the company that hosts your website, has all your files sitting on a server (computer) somewhere, probably in a room with a bunch of other servers (computers) where thousands upon thousands of websites are hosted.
When you have your domain registered at a different place than you have your hosting, the domain is told where to find the hosted files using something called nameservers. Nameservers are like the “City” for a real (snail mail) address. When you are mailing a letter, the post office has to know the city before they can deliver to your street, right? How many people live on a street called West 1st Street in the United States? Probably a TON. You need to know that the city is Topeka, KS where this West 1st Street is located before you can deliver the mail. Get it? You go to the city first, and then from there you find the specific address you are looking for.
Well, these nameservers tell the domain what “city” to look in for your webfiles “address.” Once the city is known, the domain finds the address of the website and it attaches itself to those files. So when someone types in your domain, www.whatever.com, they are immediately sent to where your files are located, or hosted.
Sometimes, when you get a new site, it takes the domain a while to find the city, so when a site goes “live” it sometimes takes up to 24-48 hours for the whole world to see the new website. This is because the domain has to “propogate” or announce the new settings to the Internet, and all the necessary computers have to make the change in their address books, so they know where to look when someone types in the domain.
You still with me?
These “nameservers” are actually part of something called DNS records. DNS records actually govern all the different settings and possibilities for any given domain. You change the DNS records when you switch hosting companies among other things (including email). There are a lot of settings in the DNS records that you will probably never use. If you’re terribly interested in that aspect, there is a plethora of info available online and you can read all about DNS to your heart’s content.
Shared Hosting
Most of us have what is called shared hosting. Shared hosting means that your site and many other sites share the same server. This can be a problem if your site, or other sites on the same server get a lot of traffic. If this happens, it is similar to what happens when you open too many files and programs on your computer at the same time and it gets slooooooooow, and then sometimes just locks up, and the only thing you can do is restart, or reboot. Since the server is just a computer — when one of the sites gets too much traffic all at once, it can “crash” the server and someone who is monitoring the server has to reboot.
OK, so what?
All that aside, the thing that is important to understand is that your website files don’t necessarily need to be hosted in the same place where you have your domain registered. Anyone that tells you differently is not being truthful. There are many good hosts available, with packages ranging from $4 and change a month to several hundred dollars a month, depending on what you need. Most folks will find that shared hosting works well for them, but sites like http://www.vstateblazers.com that literally get thousands of hits in an hour at times needs a more specialized kind of hosting — with a dedicated server. With a dedicated server, an entire hard drive is used for only one purpose — to host your website. It is like you are renting a whole computer just for you. Many sites simply can’t afford that kind of price tag which can be $99+ per month.
The main thing to look for when checking out potential hosts, is that you use a host that can accommodate your needs. For non-technical sites that don’t need a lot of back end, GoDaddy is a good option. It’s inexpensive, and their tech support 24-hour hotline is just about the best tech support in the business. Although, they will try to sell you something every time you call. Such is life I suppose.
Site5.com is a good one as well. One of the things I really like is they use an off-site monitoring service that validates their 99.9% uptime guarantee. Their tech support is a bit slow, but their prices are fair, and the provide a lot more options for developers in the way of back end programming.
Check the online reviews. Hosting is kind of funny in that way. People are very opinionated about hosting, and are not afraid to talk about how good or bad their hosting company is. They get reeeeallly intense about it. That’s understandable though. Shop around, it’s worth the time to do it.
Ok, so do you have any questions?
Any answers?
Anyone want a mint?
Part III email, coming soon …
Just my 2¢ anyway!
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