How do I get my web site on the internet?
Options A and B below assume you plan on massive 24 hour a day flow of visitors to your web site, or at least that's what your working for. Option C below assumes you only want your web site to be available a few hours a day for only a few actual visitors.
There are only 3 options to getting a web site on the internet. Click on each option below for a concise description.
Option A: own and operate a server
Option B: Web Hosting
Option C: Home Web Server
Conclusion
Step 1: Build and maintain your own server 24 hours a day, including the server software licenses as needed for applications. Plesk not free, windows server 2003 ($1000 to $8000), windows web server IIS (expensive) or Redhat Linux (free), apache (free).
Step 2: Pay about $300 per month for a T1 line (the minimum needed) to where you keep your server.
Step 3: Build a website with either Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or other Content Management System (CMS).
Step 4: Upload your web site to your server. I say "upload," because even those who build their own servers tend to develop their web sites on another computer, since their server is dedicated to serving... So they upload their web sites to their own server the same way anyone else who would purchase web hosting from them.
Pros:
a) You really get to know how web pages are served to the internet!
b) You have no choice but to learn how web pages are served to the internet... If that is what is important to you, then this is where you should start. But make no mistakes about it, this is not learning about web development, creating web pages, sites, or multimedia for the internet. This is learning about how servers work.
Cons:
a) You really get to know how web pages are served to the internet! If you don't care, like you don't care how your car works, just as long as it gets you where you want to go. Taking this route wastes what little time you have left on this planet delaying the work you really want to do.
b) You have no choice but to learn how web pages are served to the internet... If that's not what is really important to you, you're wasting your time, just to get to what really is important to you, the content you want to get out on the internet.
c) Even if you only use illegally obtained bootleged software or free software, this will cost you at least $300 per month for the T1 line, not including electricity which might turn out to be more expensive than you thought just for heat control. If you pay for windows web server IIS, the price jumps again, between $1000 to $8000 dollars. If you choose Redhat Linux and apache, your web server is free, but you still pay monthly for the T1 line.
d) If you add up all the money and time you spend on this option, it will grossly overshadow the cost of option B, I explain below.
Step 1: Build a website with either Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or other Content Management System (CMS).
Step 2: Either rent a domain name (indeterminate) or register your own ($8-$10 per year).
Step 3: Rent web space (also known as "web hosting") from someone who already maintains a server, a T1 line or greater connection to the internet, and who wants to spread the cost out over as many people as possible. Price can vary anywhere from $5 to $200 per month for web hosting depending on what products or services they include in the package, and how good their confidence game is in terms of leading you to believe that only their special magic will work, be reliable enough, or whatever. When you rent web space, your web space provider will create a domain space for your domain. You just point your domain name, using the DNS (domain name service) provided by your domain name registration service at no extra charge, to the web space provider. We will show you how to do this here with an animated tutorial (coming soon).
Step 4: Upload your website.
Pros:
a) FAST: If the web site or content is what's really important to you, you get to start working on what's important to you right away.
b) Save huge amounts of money: The cost can be anywhere from $10 per year for the domain name plus $5 per month to $200 per month (extremely ridiculous). If you spend any time browsing the internet for web hosting services, it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to find a dozen web hosts in the range of $15 per month or cheaper. Note: TechSelfHelp charges $5 per month.
This price range is so low, it is in your interest to simply work 1 extra hour each month to cover the cost, rather than to work an extra job to pay for building and maintaining your own server. $5 is the cost of 2-3 large latte cappuccino's each month, very cheap.
c) Reliability: When your home computer goes down, your web site doesn't. Problems that affect your home computer do not affect your web site.
d) Power: Whether 1 or 10,000,000 visitors a day to your web site, your costs do not change, providing your web site visitors don't download more than 10 GB each month from your web site.
Example, if your website is only 150 MB, they can download all of it, including all the stuff they can't really download because it's part of the core programing they will never see, your entire web site can be downloaded 66 times. But most visitors will only look at most 50 pages of your web site in any given month and if the average html page is 20 KB, then that's 1 MB downloading per seriously drawn to you visitors each month. At that rate you can have 10,000 such serious avid readers so hypmatized each month without any chance of being charged a higher rate for extra bandwidth. The going rate for extra bandwidth from web hosting providers is $10 each month for each extra block of 10 GB bandwidth. That's $10 per 10,000 serious visitors to your web site each month. If you can get that many visitors to your web site, there are many ways to place advertising or just place an ad for your web hosting service on your site in exchange for free infinite bandwidth. Really this is not a problem to worry about, unless you find out that your web host charges more than $10 per month for each 10 GB block of extra bandwidth, in which case you need to move your web site to TechSelfHelp web hosting... In many cases your web host won't charge you anything for it, because in order to generate so much bandwidth by a content heavy web site, the site owner must pay for extra space for all that content. In which case, the revenue for the extra space will exceed the cost of all the extra bandwidth, they are often easily appeased just by you placing an ad for them on your web site, since you generate so much traffic to your site anyway. Seriously, don't sweat the bandwidth question when you rent web space, unless they charge you for the first 10 GB of traffic and more than $10 per month for each extra 10 GB block of extra bandwidth.
e) FREE TO MOVE ANYTIME: Another great advantage of using web hosting, you can move your website between web hosts anytime you want, say for example when you find a cheaper deal elsewhere on the internet. Watch out though, some web hosts will require an annual contract, requiring you to pay for the entire year, even if you do move your site to another host after 1 month.
Note: TechSelfHelp only commits you to as far in advance as you have already paid for. If you buy web space from TechSelfHelp and set up your account to pay monthly automatically charged to a credit card or from your checking account using PayPal, you can cancel anytime without being commited to pay for anything else. Because each month you are charged for next month's service, that is "pay for the time period before you use it," you can leave any tme, no other charges, no fees, just cancel your recurring payment subscription in PayPal and move to a cheaper web host, or even save your website on your home computer until you can afford to put it back online again with us or anyone else. TechSelfHelp has no commitment period!
f) VERY FAST, VERY RELIABLE: If your web host has at least a T1 line, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to worrying about visitors overwhelming your web site. TechSelfHelp has fast, redundant Internet connections,
14 Gigabit Ethernet links, and 6 separate backbone providers. This means, if one internet connection goes down, there are 5 other backbone providers who's systems automatically and instantly optimize and re-route the traffic over them. There is no hiccup. Visitors to your site will not notice any change in performance.
g) You are Insured against server crashes: If a server crashes, your costs do not change. If you had managed your own server and it crashed, you would be out of business until you repaired or replaced it.
Cons:
a) $5 to $15 per month.
There are no other cons!
TechSelfHelp's $5 per month charge is the cost of one fast food dinner each month. And lets face it, who wouldn't live longer by skipping one more fast food meal each month. What other internet web space host provider can claim to be good for your health? (LOL)
Just for Fun: If you are a medical doctor, please let us know whether or not you would recommend TechSelfHelp for improving one's health here. We would love to be able to say, something like 1 out of 5 doctors recommend TechSelfHelp for improving your health. At the very least, for comic stress relief.
Option C:
Step 1: Build a web site.
Step 2: Set up your home computer to act like a server.
Step 2: Register a domain name and have your domain registration service provide you with a dynamic dns. A dynamic dns will accept signals from your computer, if you have the right software, telling it where your server is, your home computer. Because your home computer's internet address will change every time you connect to the internet, over your existing personal internet service. Customers of DSL or Cable internet service do not have a fixed IP (internet address).
Step 3: Turn on your computer during the hours you want your web site to be online.
Step 4: Make sure you copy your web site into the correct directory in your "home web server."
Pros: If the software on your computer doesn't cost anything and if your domain registration service provides dynamic dns, then all you have to pay for is continuing to register your domain every year, about $10 per year.
Cons:
a)
When your computer goes down or has any problem, your web site goes down or has the same problem.
b)
Your site will only be available during the hours in which your computer is running and your internet connection service is running.
c) Your internet connection service may start charging you extra fees in the hundreds of dolars for excessive bandwidth if any number of people actually do start visiting your site.
d) The number of visitors and volume of downloads from your site will be limited by your home internet connection. For example, if 10 people try to download your homepage, which is 20 KB in size, at the same time, that is 200 KB. And if this all happens in 1 second, then you will be uploading to the internet from your computer at 200 KB per second. If you have dsl, that may be all the bandwith you have, consumed by 10 simultaneous visitors. This is a huge bottleneck. Visitors to your web site may not stick around to see any other pages when they have to wait or try, try, try again to view your web site.
e) The time it will take you to figure out how to do this, will likely cost you more than option B above. If you choose option C, add up all the hours you spend figuring it out, then multiply that times what you make per hour after taxes and withholdings and this is equal to what you have spend on option C. You will see, it does exceed the cost of option B. Don't forget to add up the cost of fixing every hiccup and getting it going again after every breakdown, which only you are responsible for.
Conclusion: If you are serious about getting a web site and are not serious about maintaining your own server, there is only one choice, option B.
If you choose option B above for getting your web site on the internet, then either ask for web hosting service from TechSelfHelp here or find another internet web space hosting provider.
"How do I get a domain name?"
"Which software should I use to create a website?"
"Do I need a windows server or a Linux server?"
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