Understanding Web Basics

What is a web page? How does the internet work on a personal level? What is a domain? What is a server? What is hosting? How do I get my own web page or do I even need one? Is it expensive to have your own web page? How can I change my web page? Can I just have someone else do that for me?

        Last night I was meeting with some very dear friends and the topic of web sites came up. They want web sites but are not really internet savvy. To be totally honest, I’m no wizard when it comes to internet stuff and I often rely on my wife and oldest son when I need an answer and I am baffled. BUT I do know a few things, basic things, and I thought I’d pass them on in the form of an analogy.

        My wife is an artist. She paints wonderful pictures. Sometimes they are abstract, sometimes they are realistic. She paints on canvas and mostly uses acrylic paint. I am something of an artist myself, but I use words instead of paint, but we both manage to ‘paint a picture.’ People get what we are doing.

        She needs a canvas to paint on. She buys canvases at a local art store. She also would like other people to see her art, so until she is famous, she needs a public place to display her work. There are lots of galleries around, but pretty much all of them charge a certain amount to display your work, or want a percentage of your sales, if you are into selling your art. So my wife decided to rent a room in a local gallery. She can hang as many pictures as she wants, it’s her room. She can hang paintings as big as the walls, one on top of the other, if she wants to.

Are you with me on all this? OK, here we go. Buying a name for your website is like buying a canvas. You go to a store, like GoDaddy.com and shop for the perfect name. I bought RobertBritt.com.  I own that website, but it is a blank canvas that no one can see.

I need to hire an artist to paint my picture (design my website) So Deb uses a program called Dreamweaver to design the site. I use a program called NAMO web editor. We both design sites. (Her sites are more beautiful, she is really an artist, I am a slash and burn designer)

The place we hang the art is called a host (also called a server.) Until you pay to hang your art, no one can see it. You can have a really cool website designed and have it on your computer and you can look at it all day and marvel at its’ fabulous appearance. But until you have it uploaded to a hosting site, no one else can look at it, unless you invite them to your house.

OK, now I will talk in web talk. You buy a domain name (like RobertBritt.com) and then you buy hosting. This can all be done at one place, or at two different places. Different places charge different prices for different levels of service.

You hire someone to design your site, and maybe also hire them to update it and load it to the server (the host.) The cost for this varies greatly and also depends how much you need done. If all you need is text (typing, words only) on a white background, the amount of work they do is minimal. If you have a lot of pictures and lots of different pages, the design is more. If they design your logo and graphics, the cost is more.

If you buy space on a server, some servers allow you to put lots of sites there, all for one price. Other servers charge for each site you have hosted.

Do you need a website? That depends on what you want to do, and what you want it to do. If you want to keep a web diary (called a blog) you can do that free on lots of sites. GeoCities, MySpace, Xanga, Yahoo, and many others offer that for free.

If you want to sell stuff and have your own domain (www. This is the name I want .com ) You have to pay for design (unless you can do it yourself, or have a friend who is willing to do it free) You have to pay for the domain. You have to pay for hosting.

If there are no other questions, class is dismissed. If there are any questions then e-mail me. (yes, a bear does sh*t in the woods, and the tree makes a noise when it falls and no one is there to hear it, and the chicken came first [I know because my mom told me so]

Any other questions, e-mail me

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All views and opinions expressed in an article or column are the author’s own.

Copyright Robert E. Britt 2005