You can run down to the store and get a gallon of milk. You can pop by your local big box and pick up a new furniture set for your living room. You can even get online and order a car to be delivered to your house! But getting a new website, built, deployed, and available for visitors can be daunting for many. Let’s examine the several pieces that go together to give the visitors of your small business website the online experience.
Domain Name
In order to be found online, you first need to register a domain name. Often referred to as buying a domain, you will actually pay an annual fee that can be little as $10, depending on several factors. That domain name registration can be done at any number of registrars, but they all accomplish the same objective – registering the domain as a web surfing destination for by a web browser. Once that process is complete, you are still several steps away from passing out your new shiny www.
DNS
Domain Name System is the internet way of saying “address book”. When someone fires up a browser and types in an address, or clicks a link from your Facebook or Google Maps page – their browser reaches out to the DNS Servers which keep track of where domains are and asks, what server is groundcontrolwebsolutions.com located on? The DNS returns an IP (Internet Protocol) address that looks something like – 208.97.177.131 – in this case the IP address for groundcontrolwebsolutions.com. Your browser scoots on over to that IP address, and bam, you’re at the website.
Web Hosting
When looking at a site, you’re literally viewing a file on a computer (or computers) somewhere in the world, very similar to how you would open up a Power Point or Excel file. Instead, the program that’s running on the web server is showing you the content with the design specified by the person who created the site. Web hosting can be done in several different fashions, and you can in fact secure all 3 of these deliverables at one vendor if you prefer. Some considerations you’ll want to account for when planning on a web host are, how many people am I planning to have visit? Will I be selling products and processing payments? If the site goes offline (things happen!) will I loose money?
Get in touch with us today so we can review what you need and determine the best path forward. We’ll get you on the right track and setup for success!
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