Placing your site on the net

1. Free web space
2. Purchased web space
3. Your own web server

Free web space

About the first possibility, there isn't so much to say. There are many ISPs who offer this service. Usually you have to join by filling out a form. There are ISPs who offer a lot of space, and I think this is a good way if you have to put a simple personal page on the net. However this choice has some problems. First of all, these services are used by a lot of people so servers are often pretty busy. Second, they place your pages inside of specific folders, and, talking about your URL, the final result maybe something like this: http://www.provider.com/freespace/users/yourname/finally_yourpage.html. Well, as you can see, that isn't a cool URL like, say, http://www.yourname.com. Finally, as a last trouble - but not of less importance - they often put banners inside of your pages. In other words: great choice for personal pages but very bad choice for a company presentation. You can get free web space here.

Purchased web space

Ok, we are talking about virtual hosting. What's virtual hosting? Well, in a nutshell, it's like if you had your own server. Users who visit your site (www.yourname.com for example) don't know if you have a server or you haven't it. Usually ISPs have a computer where there are several web servers running. You have a piece of disk to put your pages, and you are sharing one computer with several other customers. Here we have to point out an important issue about your page's URL. If you want to get an URL like this: http://www.yourname.com, you have to register your domain name. So you have to choose the name of your site, then you have to check out if that name exists, then you have to contact the organization who runs domains in order to put your domain inside of its database. The organization who ran domains of all over the world, is the Internic. It isn't really difficult to register your domain. You have to fill out a form and submit a 'Registration Agreement', and you have to pay 100$ for this service (yeah, it isn't free) for first 2 years. Then you have to pay 50$ every years. So you have to provide the domain name, your name and address, the server IP address and the DNS server IP address (if you have problems with these obscure terms I think you have to get yourself helped by a trusted provider). An ISP usually offers you a second level domain, or a third level domain. A second level domain is something like this: www.yourname.com (as the top level domains are 'com', 'net', 'edu' and so on), while a third level domain is something like this: www.yourprovider.com/yourname. If you ask to a provider for your domain registration, you haven't to know details. However I think you should know something about the Administrative Contact. Inside of the Registration Agreement, you have to specify the Registrant, the Administrative Contact, the Technical Contact and the Billing Contact. The Registrant is the domain's owner, and the Administrative Contact is anyone who runs the site. Well, usually you haven't to think about these details, because your provider will take care of all of them, but I think you have to make yourself as the Registrant and the Administrative Contact. Often your ISP makes you as the Registrant, but doesn't makes you as the Administrative Contact. What's the problem? Well, you could have problems when switching providers. In fact, when you change provider, your new provider submit the new agreement to the Internic who asks to the previous Administrative Contact (or Technical Contact or Billing Contact) a confirmation. So, when the Administrative Contact reply with a confirmation (ACK), the Internic can update its database. Where is the trouble? Well, if you are the Administrative Contact, you will receive an e-mail from the Internic, and you will reply with a confirmation. No problem. But if you aren't the Administrative Contact, the Internic won't send you any e-mail (even if you are the Registrant). The Internic will send an e-mail to the Administrative Contact (i.e. your old provider). If your old provider doesn't reply with a confirmation, well, you can do NOTHING! You have to ask to your old provider to reply. And you have to wait for a while. So remember: ask to your provider to make yourself the Registrant (of course) and the Administrative Contact. As I said we are talking about virtual hosting services. However, when you choose an ISP, you should know something about these services:

1. Bandwidth
2. Reliability
3. Response times
4. Customers support
5. Used hardware/software
6. Available features

Bandwidth

Every time that a visitor go to your site and download your page, this transfer causes data to be sent over the provider connection. Well, think about this connection as a pipe. This pipe hasn't an unlimited size. In other words this pipe allows a given amount of data to be transferred. Let's see: suppose your page's size is 10kbytes. Suppose now that you receive 100 visitors. 10 * 100 = 1000Kbytes (1Mb). So you have to consider the importance of the ISP's connection to the Internet according to your needs. In other words, if you don't want to develop a site with millions of visitors (say like the Netscape's site) you don't actually need an huge connection. Notice that a T3 connection (i.e. a 45Mbps connection) doesn't necessarily means 45 Mbps. In fact ISPs don't use the whole bandwidth, and therefore, a T3 connection can range from say 4 up to 45 Mbps.

Reliability

This means: how many times your ISP's server crashes? If that server is down most of time, well it isn't so much reliable. It so happend that sometimes servers go down. Pay attention to ISP who say that their server never crash! But you have to know how many times that occurs. Besides you have to know how much your ISP takes to handle the problem. It's ok when the problem will be fixed in a matter of minutes, it isn't ok when the problem will be fixed in a matter of several hours.

Response Times

I suggest you to check how much it takes to download your page from the ISP's server at various times of day. So you avoid to be confused with the slowness of the Internet at certain hours of the day when the traffic reach high peaks.

Customers support

In other words how much your ISP takes to answer to your questions? How much competent are his suggestions?

Used hardware

You have to know if your provider runs your server on a 386 PC or a 3090 mainframe. The more powerful the server's hardware is, the more load it can bear. Besides you have to know the used operating system. The most used operating system for this job is Unix. But servers can run on WindowNT platform, Macintosh platform, Linux platform and other.

Available features

ISPs can provide several services. This is a list concernig most offered services:

• CGI scripts (a good provider let you to install your own scripts, however usually they provide some their scripts)
• Counters
• Guestbooks
• Secure servers (these servers allow people to send information in an encrypted manner, so they can send their card number over a more safe channel than the Internet)
• Search engines
• Database support
• Statistics
• FTP access
• E-mail POP account

I think that FTP access, E-mail POP account and an access counter are the least of features that you have to expect from your ISP.

Your own web server

There is another way: housing. Here you have to ask to a provider yet, but you have your own server. In other words you have your computer connected to the Internet which is usually placed at your ISP's premises. You have to pay much more money to get an housing service. And you have to think about several things (even if your ISP will help you). Finally you can do all things by yourself. Well, here things get really expensive and difficult to handle. I can't explain you how to run a web server here. You have to spend a lot of money to run a web server and besides you have to know a lot of things. When you run a web server you have your computer connected 24 hours every days to the Internet! You have to think about electric energy (and pay a big bill), you have to think about your computer (the server), you have to know an operating system like Unix, you have to install and configure a web server like NCSA or Apache, you have to think about your connection (and pay a lot of money for your dedicated line), you have to think about backups, you have to think about security, you have to know HTML, CGI and so on. Really a lot of things. You can't learn all these things by reading a web page...