Internet Domains
 

Hi All

I'm very inexperienced with the internet, but I'd like to set up my own website. I would like it ideally if I could run it from my laptop at home. Can anyone help me here, I want to register an address and make it as easy and cheap as possible.

Many thanks

LJ

You need two things...

1) A host - a company that will physically host the site on their machines for which you will pay a monthly fee depending on how server space it takes up and much traffic the site generates.

2) A domain - this is just the unique name of the site which you will need to pay to get registered. This needs to be renewed periodically (every year?).

ISPs usually offer a small amout of web server space to their users so if you just want to set up a few pages that are unlikely to generate a lot of traffic you could use them and not have to pay for a host. And if you don't mind what the site's address looks like you wouldn't even need to pay for a domain. They might give you something like this for free...

www.yourisp.com/~yourusername

But if you wanted something unique like...

www.londonjets.com

You'd have to pay to get that registered.

Hosts often sell combine packages - web server space and domain name registration together. Otherwise when you register the name you'd need to get it redirected to your actual host.

Now when it comes to chosing a host - or a company to handle the domain registration - I'm afraid I don't have much experience on that front.

I am typical. I know little about the internet too. For my hobby website;
I registered my --------.co.uk domain (web address) via 1and1.co.uk
The cost , £4 for two years.
This redirects to the free 10Mb or whatever it is webspace provided by my ISP, blueyonder