The Basics of Owning A Web Site

What It Costs

Owning a web site requires you to buy two things:

• A domain name ($10-$25/year)
• Hosting space ($5+/month)

You buy a domain name from a registrar company. You buy hosting space from a hosting company.

The registrar companies allows you to register for a domain name (i.e. ockhamdesign.com, etc.) and the internet address of your hosting company. A hosting company rents hard drive space on their computers to put your web site so the outside world has access to it.

From the browser to website and back

1. A person types in www.ockhamdesign.com into their browser
2. The browser makes a request your Intenet Provider's (Comcast, Qwest, etc) DNS server to look up the internet address of the hosting company for Ockham Design
3. The browser request gets sent over to the hosting company computer
4. The hosting companies computers sees the request is for Ockham Design so it goes to the hard drive space for Ockham Design
5. The hosting company sends back the HTML and images for the homepage back to the browser

Without a domain name, Step 2 doesn't happen. Without a hosting company, Steps 3-5 doesn't happen.