How to make a website

It depends. If you are a small organisation with a small website (e.g. a few basic pages) then you only need a very basic package. If your site needs a database or some other server software then you will have to pay a little more. If you have loads of employees and want loads of email addresses then you may have to pay a little more.

Few sites need to go to the trouble of a dedicated server. Dedicated servers are for businesses where the website is critical and very big. Most of us don’t need a server and can happily survive sharing a server with other businesses and organisations.

Remember that you can always upgrade your hosting later if you find out that you need more power or more features.

Hosting will nearly always include some email features as well. If you need lots of email boxes you should take this into account when you sign up.

Also you will probably want some kind of statistics information – this is usually fairly basic but it can help you a lot to know what is going on. If your web space doesn’t have a statistics package then consider something like Google Analytics – you get better information but it does require adding some code to your web pages.

You will also need a way to get your website up to the web server – you will normally use something called FTP (file transfer protocol) to do this. When you sign up for some hosting you should get some details about this but it is essentially a username and a password and an address like ftp.mywebsite.com (just an example – yours will be different).

Here are some simple guidelines (ignoring email requirements):

Basic Sites with 5 to 50 pages = basic web hosting package

Bigger web site = basic to mid level hosting package (if your site is massive and your business depends on it you may consider a dedicated server).

E-commerce website = package with a database (e.g. mysql, etc) or and server software (e.g. PHP, etc)

CMS (Content Management System) or Blog = as E-commerce

Linux or Windows or something else for hosting?

The vast majority of the Internet runs on Linux or Unix servers. Don’t be sucked into Windows just because you find it familiar. The way you use your site will not be much different whatever kind of hosting you are using. Whilst Windows has improved in more recent years it is still not as secure (in my opinion) or as fast (in my opinion) as Linux. Most times you will find yourself having to pay more for Windows hosting and it really is not worth the extra money (in my opinion).

What is PHP?

PHP is a server side scripting language. In essence it is a programing language that you can use to write stuff for your website to do. It is often used when a connection to a database needs to be made. Don’t confuse it with Javascript which is a browser side scripting language. PHP runs on the computer that hosts your website and Javascript runs on the computer of the person viewing your website. PHP for stuff that has to be done at the server and Javascript for all those fancy bells and whistles that make your website more user friendly (this is a big generalisation but hopefully it helps).

There are many other server side scripting languages like ASP, JAVA, Pearl, RubyonRails, etc. but PHP is by far the most popular.

What is mysql?

MySQL is a database program that runs on a server (the computer where your website sits on the Internet). It allows you to create shopping systems, content management systems, etc. There are lots of other databases that do the same thing but mysql is the most popular.

Warning: Sometimes your site will go down

Every now and then (although not very often) your website will stop working and you won’t be able to bring it up in a browser. DON’T PANIC!! This happens from time to time. As I said at the beginning, the Internet is a network of computers and sometimes computers stop working and need to be restarted. If your site disappears it means somewhere a computer has crashed and needs restarting. If you pay for hosting this will happen pretty quickly if it’s your sites computer that has crashed. However sometimes the problem lies elsewhere and it may not be your web hosting companies problem. I’ve had websites that I couldn’t reach but others I knew could. There is a technical reason for this but I don’t want to bother you with it here.

The trick is to leave things for an hour or so and if you still can’t see your site you should try contacting your hosting company.

There are lots of other things to say about hosting and domains etc but that will have to be in other posts.