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Setting Up Web Space on the Internet

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Setting Up Web Space on the Internet

To make an HTML page part of the publicly accessible World Wide Web, you need to put it on a web server. If you run your own web server, this procedure is simply a matter of copying the file to the right directory folder. However, you may not have access to a web server that you can use to host your own web site, in which case you'll need to use a web server run by an Internet service provider (ISP) to host your pages.

A web server is a computer permanently connected to the Internet that uses special software to deliver web pages upon request by web browsers.

Almost all ISPs that offer Internet access also now offer space in which to place your own personal web pages for little or no additional cost, though you may have to pay extra if your site attracts a huge number of visitors or includes very large multimedia files. Be sure to check with the company you're getting Internet access from to see whether any web space is built into your standard account. This is often a great way to get started with creating a web site because the space is usually free and readily available.

Did you Know?

Even if it's free initially, you don't have to use the same company that provides you with Internet access to host your pages, especially if they don't offer advanced features such as shopping cart and online merchant services. You may also want your own domain name (www.yourname.com), which typically requires you to use a paid hosting service. And, finally, if you plan on running a high-traffic business web site, you may get more features and more reliable service from a company that specializes solely in web hosting. To comparison-shop the hosting services offered by various Internet service providers, go to the list of ISPs at http://thelist.internet.com/.


Web hosting prices for a site start as low as $3 per month, but that price can rise if lots of people start viewing your pages. For a site with about a hundred different web pages, I have paid as little as $3 per month when a few thousand people looked at my pages, and as much as $2,000 per month when hundreds of thousands of people looked at my pages. The pricing ultimately comes down to how much traffic your site gets from web users, although early on you can probably expect traffic to be fairly light. Keep in mind also that web hosting prices are getting more and more affordable, so you're likely to find a suitable hosting service on the lower end of the range I've mentioned.

Free web hosting services such as Geocities (http://geocities.yahoo.com/), Tripod (http://www.tripod.lycos.com/), and Angelfire (http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/) are very popular with web page authorsand, yes, they really are freealthough most such services require that you include advertisements of their choosing on your pages. The other issue with these free services is that they often display pop-up ads to people viewing your pages, which can be annoying. I know that Angelfire offers an in-between option for around $5 per month that is ad free, so that's not a bad trade-off if you're on a tight budget.

By the Way

One of the most important choices you'll need to make when you set up a web site is the name you want to use as the site's address. If you don't pay to register a unique domain name of your own, which runs around $30 per year, your site's address will include the name of your Internet service provider (http://www.shore.net/~smith/, for example). If you're willing to pay for it and register a name, you can choose any name that isn't already used by another company (http://www.mister-smith.com/, for example).

If your web hosting service doesn't offer domain name registration, you can use a domain service such as http://www.godaddy.com/, http://www.easydns.com/, or http://www.register.com/. Before registering a new name, you must first perform a search to see whether the name is available; each domain name service offers such a search service at no charge. Keep in mind that you can register a domain name even if you aren't ready to publish your web site; this is a good idea if you want to make sure you don't lose the name while you build your site.



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