Setting Up a Website

To get a website set up, you need two things -- a domain name and web hosting.

Domain Name

A domain name is a name that you come up with for your website. For example, if you want a website showing your photos of the moon, you might come up with a name such as photogallerymoon.com. This must be a unique name that no one else has taken already. To check to see if a domain name has been taken or not, you can visit various ICANN-accredited domain name registrars. These are places where you can buy your domain name and they will also check if your domain name has been taken. For example, GoDaddy.com is one such registrar and we will use it in our example.

So we go to GoDaddy.com and enter the domain name photogallerymoon.com under the section titled "Start Your Domain Search". GoDaddy will tell you whether the name is available or not. If available, you can purchase the name from GoDaddy right there online. GoDaddy will then register the domain name for you. Once registered, you own that domain name.

If the domain name is not available. You can come up with another name such as photogallery-moon.com or photogalleymoononline.com or photogallerymoon.net, etc. Note that you can use hypens in the name. Or you can try another top level domain name such as .net instead of .com

Private Domain Name Registration

A point about registering domain names is that when you register for a domain name it is possible that your name and other information may be made publicly accessible because it will be listed in the domain name registrar. If you do not want your information to be publicly available, some registrars (such as GoDaddy) will allow you to make the registration private (known as private registration) for an extra fee. Basically, they will then register the domain name for your via a proxy such that the registrar will list the proxy instead of listing your information.

Web Hosting

Now that you have a domain name, you need web hosting. A web host provides you with web space for you to upload your HTML files. Often one service provider can handle both the domain name and web hosting for you. However, you have the choice of buying your domain name from one provider and buying your web hosting from another.