New to the Web? Want to know how to get started and get your neat site online? Well, this is the right article for you. Here you will learn some of the terms you will need to know to get started.

You first need a web host. No, this is not a duck having a dinner party. It is service providers who puts your site on a computer connected to the Internet. Then people who are looking for what you have to offer will find it on the Internet when they go surfing. The computer they use to put your site on the Net looks just about like yours does – the one you are using to read this. However, it is set up to "serve up" web sites – hence the term server. They serve them up fairly fast and usually have thousands of sites on the Net on more than one server. Picture a large room like a library with rows and rows of huge servers. Now you have it. The web host is renting space to you so you can get your site on the WWW.

There are several ways to accomplish this renting space routine, but the details really do not matter all that much, just so long as you have the space you need at the price you want.

When you start looking for a hosting plan, you will definitely run into some strange mumbo jumbo and a lot of other details to wade through. Basically though, it all boils down to the same thing – no matter what plan or package you buy you will end up with your site on the Net. So if you get bells and ding dongs with that package, good on you. They might come in handy for later when you get more web savvy. Most of the hosting plans have the same things in common anyhow.

Now, some lingo. Server type only means the type of software running on the server. Nice to know if someone says that to you, but really not something you would be tested on later. This is mostly applicable if you have a basic facts web site. If however you have one that is more complex – say it has database functions etc. then knowing what kind of server type will come in handy.

Disk space means the amount of actual space that is available to you for storing your site on the web server. So how large is your site is what you want to know. The larger it is, the more disk space you use, and the more you pay.

Bandwidth means every time somebody looks at your site, data is passed over the Internet from the web server host site to the browser of the person looking at your site. Bandwidth is a measure of how much transfer is available. If you have high traffic, you will need a high bandwidth. If you have a basic web site you won't need much. High traffic sites like Yahoo for example have very high bandwidth requirements, but the average site does not.

Email accounts simply refers to how many email accounts you can have with the web hosting account.

Your web site usually has a name by the way rather than getting a series of numbers that act as your computers physical address. It is way easier to find a name on the net – like www.bullfrogwebworks.ws for example- than it is to find and/or remember something like this: 205.11.109.64. The series of numbers is called an IP address – IP being short for Internet Protocol.

You can just tell the host company what you want for a name, they will check to see if it is available and take things from there. When they check to see if the name is available, that means they are checking a database with thousands of names in it that have been used or could be used to name a website (called domain names). You may have picked a name for your site that someone else already has, so you may need to either change your name, or change the extension of your name. For instance if you wanted dandydees.com and someone has this, you might be able to get dannydees.ca instead. Your host provider will guide you through this process.

If you find yourself in the situation where you want to transfer your domain from one web host to another, you will have to either get them to do it for you, or do it yourself. To do that, contact the company you registered your domain name with and tell them the nameserver address of your web hosting provider. Yes, the host will give you the name of their server. It is a good idea to have your name bought for your domain/site first, and then design your site. If you do not hop to it, many times when you get that far, you will find the name you want already taken.

There are many choices for web hosting depending on what you want, what you site is like and how much money you have or do not have. You can get free hosting some places, which is great for small websites. However, you will usually have to put up with advertising on your site. With some free accounts, you can use your domain name, with others your website address is a subdomain of the free hosting company. If you do not give a flying rat about whether or not you have advertising on your site, about site reliability in terms of uptime, about how it performs, that it does not have customer support or you do not expect to grow – then choose a free web hosting account.

You can have shared hosting, which basically means you share space on a server with hundreds of other small sites. It does reduce costs, but you may not have a great level reliability. If you want to pay more, then reliability gets better. It is the old you get what you pay for point of view.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it is likely enough to get your feet wet. If you run into things you don't know, do your homework on the Net and ask questions. Someone will always be able to answer them for you.

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