Associated Computer Services Website Basics home

You've decided that you may want to do a website, but you don't have the first clue about how to get started.  Below are the three basic components necessary to put a website on the internet.

1. Choose a domain name.  A domain name is the "mysite.com" part of the "www.mysite.com" address.   The "mysite" part should be descriptive of your website.  The ".com" part part is known as the extension and is regulated by higher authorities.  The most common extensions to choose from are .com, .net, or .org.  Several more have become available lately that include .info, .tv, .cc, and .ws.

The name is registered to you and you have the control of what to do with it.  After a year, you are presented with the opportunity to renew the domain name.  If you don't renew, it will become available again for someone else to use.  You have the option of registering your name for several years at a time.

You can check to see if a name is available by using the Whois Lookup service.  Click here and follow the directions on the next page to check a domain name that you might want to use.

2. Choose a place to host your website.  This would be the service where your website is actually located.

A very important thing to consider when choosing a host is how fast is the computer that they are using and how fast is the connection to the internet?   Another concern is what will happen if the computer breaks down?

Our hosting service has approximately 1000 high performance web servers all working in unison to make sure your website is always available and fast to load.  The computers are set up to be redundant to each other.  That means if one breaks down another is already there to instantly take over.  The connections that we use to connect to the internet are five OC3 communication circuits.  Each of these fiber optic circuits connect to different national services creating a redundant as well as load balanced means of making sure people can always get to your site quickly.

3. Have your web page work done.   A web page is simply a document that is on the internet.   It can have graphics and pictures, and invisible instructions to direct you from place to place or to perform some process.

Something to be attentive to while designing pages is the content size and weight, and how well that page will load on someone's computer.  If the pictures are too large the page will load slowly.   If it loads too slowly people will not wait and will go elsewhere.

Keep these three basic steps clearly in your mind and you won't have any trouble getting your website up and running.