Gold Key Hosting | Learn The Ropes of Your Web Presence

How does this website thing work anyway?

Welcome to the online world of information and commerce. Until now the internet has likely been a one way communication device for you where you get to see what other’s have created but have never provided your own information to the world. Okay, we know you may have social media accounts and an email address but that doesn’t count. We are talking about setting up websites and publishing them to the world so you can build a business, help out a non-profit, or even just show off your prized pet photos on your very own site.

Before you get started though, there are a few things you should know. We aren’t going to get technical here at all, in fact, we are going to irritate many web masters who make their living by keeping this stuff shrouded in mystery. They use terms like domain, hosting, CMS, URL, MX Records, DNS Server, Name Server… It all sounds rather daunting but we are about to pull back that curtain. Shall we begin?

Terms and Definitions

Domain: The name of your website, ours is GoldKeyHosting.com – capitalization does not matter
URL: This stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is the full specific address for a part of a website, the URL for this page is GoldKeyHosting.com/beginner – capitalization after the / does matter often
Hosting: The storage space where the files that make up your website are held.
Server: This term is typically used interchangeably with Host or Hosting
CMS: This stands for Content Management System and is used to help create and edit websites without knowing how to code.
Browser: The software on the client device used to “surf the web” examples are Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
SSL: SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and is added to a websites to keep data transferred between the server and the browser private

What does it all mean and how does it work together?

LAND IS LIKE HOSTING

I am sure you are familiar with a home so let’s use this as an analogy. When you want to build a home, the first thing you need is a plot of land to put it on. This land is the space your home will reside on and is like the hosting plan which is where your website will reside.

LEGAL DESCRIPTIONS ARE LIKE IP ADDRESSES

The plot of land is going to have a huge legal description like “The north half of the northwest corner of section 9, township 6 north, range 38 west of the 3rd Principal Meridian.” Your hosting plan has a huge description too which is called an IP Address. It will be something like 68.99.123.161 right now and there are roughly 4 Billion addresses available. We are running out of these addresses though so soon they will look more like 2607:f8b0:4007:808::200e (and that is abbreviated). This new addressing system will be large enough to provide 1 address to every atom on earth. Oh, and should we find life similar to earth and allow them use of our new addressing system, we could support an address for every atom on up to an additional 100 planets. It is not likely that we will run out of these addresses.

HOMES ARE LIKE WEBSITES

Next you are going to want to build a home on that land. You gather all the supplies and build the home and soon you are living on that plot of land. The home in this metaphor is what you would consider your website. Your home is similar to other homes but yours has your furnishings, art and style. Your website will be similar to some others but it will have your content, photos, and style. The materials you build your home from such as, lumber, wires, and pipes are very much like the files that make up your website. Homes can be built many ways such as modular, panelized, or even built from individual lumber studs. More on this later but for now, just remember that your website on the hosting plan is akin to your home on a plot of land.

STREET ADDRESSES ARE LIKE DOMAIN NAMES

So now you have a home on a plot of land and it’s time for home warming party! Are you going to send out invitations saying come to my home at “the north half of the northwest corner of section 9…”? Of course not, you are going to give them your address instead. Come to my home at 123 Main St, Anytown USA and when they follow the directions they will show up at your home for the party. So how is it that when you told them to come to 123 Main St, Anytown USA, they arrived at your home which is clearly located at The north half of the northwest corner of section 9 township 6 north, range 38 west of the 3rd Principal Meridian? It is because you were given a street address that corresponds to that legal description because nobody but lawyers want that level of detail to do something so simple. The domain that corresponds to IP Address 68.99.123.161 happens to be the cox.com website. You can see this for yourself by copying 68.99.123.161 and pasting it into the address bar of your browser (not the search bar). When you put in that IP Address, you will see the cox.com website. Similarly, when you type in cox.com into your browser, it will take you to 68.99.123.161 without you ever knowing that number just like your party guests get to your home while never knowing the legal description. Click here to learn more about our domain name options.

HOSTING OPTIONS ARE LIKE BUILDING OPTIONS

Now that you understand the concept that your hosting plan (Host) is like raw land, your IP Address is like a Legal description, your home is like your website, and your domain is like your street address, all this should be fairly clear. There are 3 basic hosting options – Website Builder, WordPress, and Linux or Windows Hosting. As we stated earlier, your home can be built in several different ways as well so continuing with our metaphor, you can think of this as follows.

WEBSITE BUILDER IS LIKE A MODULAR HOME

A modular home allows you to simply choose from a few home plans and then add options such as colors of paint and carpet. Once the home is placed, you start moving in the furniture and artwork. This is how our website builder works. You choose the theme (plan) and the colors and then start writing your content and adding in the photos etc.

WORDPRESS IS LIKE A PANELIZED HOME

The next step up would be a panelized home. With a panelized home you have much more freedom in the overall design, look, and feel of the home. You can choose everything from number of rooms to shape of rooms, to quality of finish and you have virtually no limit on the options you want to add. They deliver all the walls and trusses and then you put it all together on your land. This is how our Managed WordPress works. You choose from hundreds of themes to begin with and add plug-ins to increase functionality and customize the site and then start to add the content and photos.

LINUX OR WINDOWS HOSTING IS LIKE BUILDING A HOME FROM SCRATCH

You can also completely customize this plan by directly adding html code to the site if you need to. The final way to build your home is from scratch using dimensional lumber and hammer and nails right there on site. This is how our web hosting plans work. You literally have your raw piece of land and go on and start building from the extreme basic. In this case, you code the site with html which stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is far beyond the scope of this training. Click here to learn more about our hosting options.

Options

So now that you know the requirements – A hosting plan and domain name, you can start building your website. If you are trying to promote a professional appearance, you should consider 2 additional items.

PROFESSIONAL EMAIL ADDRESS

If you name your company QandZwidgets.com, you can always create an email address like [email protected] but think about it for a second. If you tried to contact a company online and they had a free email address that was not [email protected], would you feel like they are a very big company taking their business seriously or would you know it was some fly-by-night company that is not sure they will be in business next year? We have several choices for email options starting as low as $17.88 per year. Click here to learn more about our email options.

SSL’S

An SSL keeps all data traveling between your website and your customer’s browser private. In the past, SSL’s were mostly used with sites that accepted payments or required personal information. This is no longer the case as the Google Chrome Security Team has stated ^*“We all need data communication on the web to be secure (private, authenticated, untampered). When there is no data security, the UA should explicitly display that.” This simply means that a User Agent (UA), which you now know as a browser, should show a red x in the address bar to let people know their information is not private. They went on to say ^*“We know that active tampering and surveillance attacks, as well as passive surveillance attacks, are not theoretical but are in fact commonplace on the web.” This is so important to Google that websites protected by SSL’s now get a boost in their ranking and it is expected that they will start shaming websites with the red x sometime soon. SSL’s start at only $28.99 per year here at Gold Key Hosting so Click here to learn more about our SSL Options.