A beginners guide for web masters
What is a web site and what is web hosting.
So, you want to become a webmaster. I hope this beginners guide for web masters will help you with your first little steps on the road to becoming a webmaster guru. We'll start with explaining some of the basics.
What is a web site.
A web site consist of a number of web pages written in HTML and stored on a web server somewhere on the Internet. These web pages are retrieved from that web server by your web browser, a program that understands the HTML language and knows how to display web pages written in HTML. The browser communicates with the web server using the HyperText Transfer Protocol or HTTP, but apart form the name, you fortunately don't need to know anything about HTTP.
All the web sites on the Internet together are often called the World Wide Web (WWW). To locate a web site on the WWW you need to know its domain name. More on domain names in our web hosting section (soon). Domain names are stored on a Domain Name Server (DNS) together with the actual address of your web server on the Internet: its Internet Protocol address (IP address). The DNS servers on the Internet work just like a telephone directory. If you move your web site to another server at a diffferent IP address, all you need to change is your site's DNS entry (Just as easy as changing your telephone number). Sometimes your browser will have problems finding the DNS server your Internet Service provider (ISP) uses, or the information in the DNS server is wrong for some reason, and as a result your browser will report a DNS error. Now you know what that means.
To access a web page you need the Uniform Resource Locator or URL of that page. The URL starts with an identifier (http://), which indicates to your browser that you would like to retrieve a web page using HTTP. This protocol identifyer is followed by the domain name of the web site and ends with the path of the page you want on that domain. For instance, the filename of this page is beginners-guide.htm and, as it is located in in the main directory of this web site, the URL of the current page you are looking at should look like http://www.webmasterguides.net/beginners-guide.htm. Just have a look at your browser's URL window.
What is web hosting.
Storing a web site on a web server and then providing the pages on request is called web hosting. Most web sites on the WWW are hosted by specialist Web Hosting Companies or Web Hosting Providers. These web hosts will normally also take care of propagating your DNS entry of your web site to any DNS server on the WWW who needs to know. This will allow them to move your site around on their servers with different IP addresses, without you needing to know or needing to change your DNS entry, Hence, when you buy a domain all you need to do is point it to your chosen web host's DNS server, and your visitors will always know where to find you.
So, how do you choose a good web hosting provider. Well, I'll discus that in my Web Hosting section. For now it is more important, to develop the initial web site first. You can do that on your own computer. Until, you have a reasonable sized and fully working web site ready (no bugs or under development signs), you don't have to decide on a web hosting provider, yet.
Developing a web site.
If all this looks complex, developing a web site is relatively simple, and is easy to learn for any beginner. The background information I provided is, however, essential if you want to understand why it is important to use domain hosting. You don't want a web site that becomes impossible to find if you need to move it. But now, let us start with developing your web site. You can either start with learning something about HTML, the language used in web pages or you can start with the much more important Content is King
Help me improve this beginners guide.
I explained a lot of sometimes complex issues in this beginners guide. Please, help me improve it by providing your feedback if you don't understand my explanations.