I have recently found that many people (including software developers) don’t know the exact steps involved with setting up a new web site. I chose to summarize these steps in this technical oriented post. The following are the main steps involved with setting up a new web site.
Available Domain Name
The first step should be finding an available domain name you can register. There are many web site through which you can search for an available free domain with your preferred extension (e.g. .com). The common fee for registering a domain with the ‘.com’ extension is $10 per year. I recommend on registering the domain name with a registrar (a company that provides domain names registration service) you trust based on recommendations you receive from people you trust.
Choosing Hosting Provider
In the past it was common to set up the server for hosting the web site in our office. Today, the common practice is to acquire the hosting service from a company that specializes in hosting others’ websites. There are different types of hosting providers and in many cases the big ones allow the smaller ones to operate as their agents, meaning that your choice to work with a small hosting provider might actually mean having your web site hosted on servers that belong to another hosting provider (a bigger one) that allows the smaller one to work as its agent. The common fee for a basic hosting pack should be around $10 per month. When choosing an hosting provider I recommend on choosing a company that was recommended to you by people you trust.
Domain Name Setting
Through the registrar’s web system you should set the DNS servers of your domain. The DNS servers are basically one (or more) IP addresses of the servers the hosting provider uses for redirecting requests to web sites it hosts. You should ask the hosting provider to provide you with the IP addresses of its DNS servers. These IP addresses should be updated via the registrar system, that updates them on the world wide DNS servers accordingly. Once the DNS Servers IP addresses are updated on the DNS world wide servers, each request sent from a browser to the domain name you registered will be forward to the DNS servers your hosting provider uses. These servers will forward that request to your web site.
Hosting Provider Setting
Once the registrar was updated with the DNS servers IP numbers you can move forward and use your hosting provider administration panel to set up your web site. Different hosting providers provide different types of web based control panels. Small hosting providers that act as agents of bigger ones might provide you either with an email address or a web based ticketing system through which you will ask them to set up the web site for you.
Once these four steps are completed you can move forward and upload the files of your web site and have it up and running.
