|
Just like every document or photo you
have in your computer is stored as an electronic file on your disk
drive, so will be the
pages of your website. The difference is that your website will not
be on your computer, but on a large and powerful computer permanently
connected to the internet and made specifically for that purpose.
This type of a computer is
called a 'server'. So one of the first things you must decide is:
who's server will be 'hosting' your website. Here you have two main
choices which differ in cost and flexibility. You probably noticed
that some website names are very simple such as "www.myschool.com"
and some might have a longer address such as "www.yahoo.com/school/newyork/k-12/myschool.com". The difference is
that in the first example the school owns their own 'domain',
where as in the second case the school uses some of the server space
available in the "yahoo" domain (that's why the address starts with
"www.yahoo.com") . Think of it like owning your own city
block (your own domain) or renting an apartment in a tall building
(part of someone else's domain). Obviously being part of someone
else's domain has some restriction such as amount of space available
for your website, number of email addresses available, number of
visitors you can have, and of course
the choice of your website address. The main advantage however used
to be the low
cost. Many internet service providers (the people that connect you
to the internet and give you an email address) will often let you
use some of their own server space to host a small website for free. On the
other hand, having your own domain means that you have significantly
more freedom and resources available to your organization. The cost
of having your own domain used to be relatively high, but with the continuing growth of the internet and
the progress of the associated technology, the cost of owning your
own domain has dropped significantly and is now less than the cost
of owning your own cell phone. Furthermore, there are now some very
easy ways to have the website pay for itself (more on that in part
4). When looking for a website
(or domain) hosting company, you need to have an idea of how
much space you will require on their server. Typical websites
containing text and some pictures require a moderate amount of space, perhaps
50MB (50 mega bytes). So a school website with 20 independent
classroom sites would require only about 1000MB=1GB (1 giga byte). What
requires a lot more server space are websites which contain video
clips or audio files. Our advice is to start small and if your site(s) begin running out of server space then your hosting company
will probably notify you, and you can simply increase your server allowance for a few
extra dollars per month. Below
are some ads from different web hosting services available on
the internet. Some will
not only host your site but also offer to create your website for
free, or at least give you the software which will allow you to do
it yourself. If you pick the right hosting service they will walk
you through the rest of the points we are about to describe.
|
