Computer machines connected to the network communicate with each other using the IP address. These IP addresses are indeed the addresses for computers on the network. Though the machines very easily understand these numerical IP addresses, it is very difficult for humans to remember these addresses. Hence, a new, easy to remember system of naming the computers connected to the network is devised. This is known as Domain Name. Domain names (human memory) in turn are mapped to the IP addresses (computer memory) in a naming server called Domain Name Server.

A domain name can be bought (Buy one now) for one or more years for a fee. At the end of the year, you need to renew it again else the domain name is deleted from the registrar’s record and made available for someone else to register. Once you purchase a domain name, you need to purchase the hosting service also which is generally a monthly service. Because of the nature of the names and finite number of words in the dictionary, there is a huge competition for the domain names. The registration is purely on a first-come-first-served basis unless there is a violation of the copyright or trademark (registered or otherwise). Hence, to expand the number of registerable domain names, several top level domains (TLDs) have been created with different extensions. Each of them have a different purpose too. The most commonly used ones are .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, etc. Apart from these, there are country code top level domains (CCTLDs) pertaining to each country’s two character country code like in, es, uk, us, etc. There could be some restrictions on these country code domain names for registration put up by the respective country registrars.

Some most common examples of domain names are google.com (and not www.google.com), yahoo.com (not www.yahoo.com).

I have introduced the term “independent website” above. An independent or full control website, is a website where the owner/administrator/organisation/team of the website has full control over what is displayed, when and how is the content displayed. Of course, there might be separate team of people within big organisations who would work on the actual content of the website, it would still be considered as independent. In an independently hosted website, the webmaster (server administrator for the websites’ servers) has got substantial amount of control on the hosting servers and has access to the parameters which he/she can use to fine tune the server for better performance of the applicaiton. Shared hosting, dedicated hosting and VPN hosting are considered the hostings for independent or full control website. With full control websites, you also have the options of several programming languages and databases which come in with most of the hosting packages.

On the other hand, there are certain web companies which let you host a few of your webpages (or rather your content on their webpages) on their server for free. The access to the hosting servers is either restricted or absent altogether. Examples of free websites are Yahoo Geocities and Google Blogspot services. For the sake of being unbiased, let us call them “Free Hosting Website (FHW)”. A user is required to register and start publishing the content on an FHW. This typically is a sub-domain of the FHW. The FHW would in turn display the content you publish in a webpage along with some of their advertisements on some part of the webpage. You get the website (sub-site) for free and FHW makes money out of the advertisements being displayed on your webpage. A win-win situation for both? Not exactly. While you have freedom to display your content, you have a restriction on how much and how you can write. Moreover, there is no direct control over what advertisements are being displayed by FHW on such a page. In turn, if you are a business entity, it could be your competitors’ advertisements being displayed, even worse, some FHWs display adult material on their free sites which would not be good for a sound business reputation on any day. Not to forget that if some day your FHW goes out of business or decides to discontinue the free offer, you might be forced to pay or even worse, you might loose all your content along with all the networking and advertisement which you have put in for the web address would be lost.

But then, picture is not so gloomy with free websites. Google, for example, lets you have a blog for free and lets you make money out of it by participating in Google AdSense. So all is not bad in free hosting.

As mentioned in my earlier article Do I need a website?, a website is not just a place on the internet, it is also a identity of an individual/group/corporation on the world wide web and not just what you put on your webpages but also how you display it to the user also matters to this identity and to your business in whole. The answer to this question again depends on what you need a website for. If you intend to have a corporate website to potray your company, your products, your offerings, etc. then you require full control of your website at all times. You can not rely on limited file type support, limited FTP access and almost absent statistics of the website.

Hence, considering several points mentioned above, I would recommend a full control website if the website means something to you and losing it would mean a loss of either material or intellectual property to you. On the other hand, if you just want some place on the internet to either exhibit your scribing skills or to pen your feelings, a free blog would be more suitable. Lastly, the decision is yours.

Related Articles:

What is a website?, Do I need a website?

Useful Info:

Earn revenue from your website through Google AdSense.

Coming back to the question – “Do I need a website?”. The answer entirely depends on what you do and what benefits the website would bring to you/your profession/your business/your individuality. Owning a website has become so fashionable and cheap that many software professionals are having a website of their own to publicise their Re’sume’s, their projects, their hobbies and even their holidays and personal diaries. This trend of personal websites is not limited to software professionals only. Many economists, stock brokers, actors, etc. have their own website where they interact with their customers/fans. A discussion forum on a website is becoming more common than it used to be, say, 5 years ago. Credit has to be given to all those open source programmers who not just came up with many good bulletin boards like phpBB and punBB but are also distributing them freely.

The cyber sector comprising of domain names and web hosting is still not very organised in India. To date, there is only one ICANN Accredited Domain Name Registrar in India. There hasn’t been much interest even by the private parties in the web hosting service except a few leading business houses like Tata Internet, Satyam Infoway and very recently Reliance Infocomm. The shared web hosting arena where more than 75% of the world’s websites are hosted, only a handful of players like Rediff and Indiatimes can be named. This is partly because of the domination of interconnectivity by VSNL which was a Government organisation until very recently and partly because of the heavy investment needed in setting up an Internet DataCentre (IDC). The bandwidth costs are still very high in India compared to the United States. That is probably why most of the small website hosting service providers in India resell the American bandwidth. That is a separate business model about which I will tell you some day. For now, until Indian Government does not decide to do something about the bandwidth costs, web hosting in India would be costlier.

There are many business sectors where, today, having a website is a must for business operations. For example, in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector where the end customer is not always from the same city or in many cases from the same part of the world. These websites will probably benefit the most from a website of their own listing out their offerings and their contact information. I believe the resulsts would be very astonishing and the business soaring (well, if you have what the customer wants to buy).

Over a period, I will write about various industries and how a website could make a difference to the industry in general. So, add this website to your farourites. For now, the judgement is to be made based on the possibilities and opportunities which await you/your business if you have a website.

Related Articles:

What is a website?

Technically, a website is a collection of electronic documents written in a definite syntax shared over the internet using a defined communication protocol. The definite syntax is called HTML or HyperText Markup Language and the defined protocol is called HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol.

In layman terms, a website is a means of sharing information through a set web pages viewed in a web browser. This information could be static (which means that all the visitors of the web page would see the same page independant of where they are viewing it from, what date they are viewing it from, etc.) or dynamic (where the content of the web page could change based on several factors including but not limited to the geography of the user, the date and time the web page is being viewed, the user who is logged on to view, etc.). A typical example of a static web page is this page where the visitor is displayed same information while the BBC News website would be a very good example of a dynamic web page where the news articles change on an hourly basis.

Websites are a great media to reach larger audience and to provide information on demand. Today, a website is not just limited to providing the information. There are a wide range of websites covering many topics. A purpose of a website could be anything. A website could be about news, about games, about travel, about history, about geography, about products, about product reviews, about product comparisons web diaries or even about About itself. According to Wikipedia, there are nearly 80 million websites in the world. Think of any topic in this world, you would find a website on that topic.

Who can have a website?

Well, the answer is simple – anybody. There is no restriction on who can have or own a website as long as the content on the website is legal. What does this mean? Legal content means that the content on the website is not an infringement of copyright and is not prohibited or banned by the Government of India. Even technically, its easy. Thanks to all the new blogging tools, starting a website does not take much technical knowledge if a person is already well versed with the working of the computer and the internet. However, for a person who is new to the computer itself, it might be a slightly tough task to set up an own website. If the necessity is not to self create a website, there are many web designers readily available today who would agree to create a website and maintain it for you at a small price. The advantages of internet come in very handy at such a time. That is, the web designer need not be in the same city as you are, they can be anywhere in India (or even world) and you could get the work done without having to see their artistic face even once.

What is required for a website?

The bare minimum requirements for a website are a computer to contain the web pages and an address by which one could access. A website need not be on the internet, it could be on a local stand-alone computer with a HTTP server running locally. However, more practical websites use a Domain Name as an address and the computer used to contain and distribute the web pages is called a Hosting Server. We would deal with Domain Names and Hosting in more detail in separate articles, for now, a website requires a Domain Name and a Hosting service.

How much does a website cost?

The answer to this depends entirely on you. What is your requirement and what are your expectations with the website. A simple personal website could be free (like a blog at Google blogspot) or it could cost several thousand Rupees a month for a full fledged high functionality corporate e-commerce site. The components involved in the cost of a website are : Domain Name, Hosting Service and the cost of maintaining the website itself (if you outsource the website maintenance). In a separate article, I have put forth the arguments and justifications for a free website vis-a-vis a paid website. Hope you find the information useful.

You might have always wondered why any IT professional makes the Hello World! proclamation first before doing anything as soon as the individual learns a piece of software code. Well, the reason is simple. Before reaching the Hello World! stage, a person has to put in lot of efforts in understanding what that “Hello World!” is all about, how to write it, how it would look, etc. The satisfaction of successful compilation and execution of the very first piece of code gives a great sense of achievement and such an immense pleasure that the individual announces it to the whole world through “Hello World!”.

The Hello World! of domainandhosting.info is about an effort to provide the useful information about domain names, web hosting and various other aspects involved in the internet world. The site primarily concentrates on providing this information relevant to India, however, as is the nature of the internet and the benefits it brings in connecting people, you might find most of the information relevant to the whole world.

Over a period of time, you will find several articles which might be useful to an internet novice and help in setting up an own website. I would try to cover various aspects of a website here, however, if I miss something or if you have any question in particular, please let me know using the contactus page.

Yours,

DnH Info Editor