Simple Steps to Setting up a Website
Simple Steps to Website Setup
Setting up a website for the first time can appear a daunting task. This article hopes to take some of the 'black magic' out of the process and through this explain why we offer the services we do and in the form we supply the various applications.
There are some basic steps to setting up a website and these are:
Step One: Buy a Domain Name
Step Two: Buy Hosting
Step Three: Build Web Pages
Step Four: Uploading Pages to Hosting
These steps seem simple enough, but this is going to depend on your level of knowledge and skill. Buying a domain name is probably going to be the easiest task on the list.
Step 1: Buying a Domain Name
The World Wide Web (WWW) has to be indexed and catalogued to allow you the viewer, via your web browser, to see the pages that websites deliver to your screen. This indexing using IP addressing to reference a particular server (computer) which holds the pages you wish to view. The use of IP addresses would make it extremely boring and hard to remember websites so instead these IP addresses are 'converted' to domain names such as ours at http://www.eve-corporation.co.uk - the actual IP address of this domain may resolve to something like 89.210.98.107 but which would you rather try to remember?
To allow you to host web pages or other material such as videos you need to have a domain name which the web indexes so it knows the IP address of the server where the website material actually resides.
Step 2: Buying Hosting
Once you have purchased a Domain Name then you need somewhere to host the files and applications that will make your website come alive. This is the files that perhaps operate a Killboard or a Forum or any similar application. It would also contain the actual files for downloadable documents or viewable images or videos. They all have to be hosted on a server PC somewhere in the world and this server PC will be indexed by the web and will have the IP address (domain name) applied to it. Once you know this domain name and type it into the address bar of your browser the browser then does its magic and contacts your web provider who inturn will contact the indexing service who in turn will connect your browser with the actual server you have defined and the server will respond by delivering the files you wish to look at to your browser.
Step 3: Build Web Pages
If you have sufficient expertise you can build web pages which you would upload to your hosting service. When someone visits your website then these files will be displayed to that visitor. The web pages can be built in various ways. Basic HTML (HyperText Markup Language) can make very attractive pages and can be done using Notepad or simple text editors if you know the html coding practices. Generally it better to use a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver or MS Frontpage or Coffee Cup or many, many other quality editors.
Other applications will use PHP or ASP which are server side applications that do a huge range of activities and deliver the resulting code as html back to the client browser. Java is a client application which runs on your PC and 'calls' for information to be provided by the server but which predominantly does its calculations or operations on your local PC - a client side application.
Step 4: Uploading Pages to Hosting
Having built your webpages as html or using Php, ASP or whatever language you wish to use then you need to upload these pages (files) to your hosting server. Programs like Dreamweaver and FronPage will automatically upload these files and will synchronise them so you have the same files on your PC as the server does and when you make changes you can select to 'transmit' these to your web space.
There are other applications which use FTP - File Transfer Protocol - to upload these pages or files and there are many, many quality programs available. One such is Filezilla which is a free, open source program that is widely used and extremely easy to configure.
So now you have the basics and we can explain why we offer the services we have available.
We can offer you Domain Registration to purchase the domain name you wish to use for your corporation, alliance or personal website.
To provide you with the web server space we supply you with hosting packages or various sizes and this will accommodate all the files and applications you could ever want to use.
Our servers understand the Php language and combined with MySql databases we can offer you a wide range of applications that are focused on the EvE community like Killboard and POS Tracker and more which are all Php based applications.
When you order a hosting package and applications we supply you with all the details you need to access these from the administative backend to allow you to configure and maintain your applications. These details include the information needed to upload your files to your webspace with FTP or one of the automated programs such as Dreamweaver.
