Domain Names:

A Domain Name is a UNIQUE identifier to find a resource (website-email-ftp etc.) on the internet, no two domain names are the same. High level domains are .com .net .org etc.

More Detail:

Think of the Internet in the way the post office works. EVERY SINGLE MACHINE that connects to the internet has an address, called an IP address. Even the machine you are on right now has your very own address. An IP address is formed from four octets (8 binary digits) like this 192.168.123.132 or as the machines see it in binary 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100. Computers use this to find other computers, so it builds from left to right. Think of it as State . Town . Street . HouseNumber.

So rather that having to remember the address 192.168.123.132 we POINT a domain name to it like WWW.DOMAIN.COM. Also you can have FTP.domain.com go to a different machine or address and so on.

As you can see, a lot of what machines do is based on hierarchy. The IP address builds from left to right, a domain name builds from right to left. There is also a hierarchy in how the domain names are managed. The machines that do this are called Domain Name Servers or DNS's. The ROOT DNS's manage simply the high level domains .com .org .net etc, and they POINT to another DNS(the primary DNS) that has specifics about that domain. DNS not only GIVES information, but they find it too. Your computer is configured to talk to a DNS supplied by your provider (Verizon, Comcast) to help you find things on the net. So it works like this, you type in WWW.GOOGLE.COM, your Comcast DNS says I don't know him, it the goes to the ROOT DNS of .COM and says, can you tell me who the primary is? ROOT replies yes the PRIMARY DNS for google.com is 192.168.123.132, your Comcast DNS then goes to the PRIMARY 192.168.123.132 and says, can you give me the address for WWW.google.com? Primary replies WWW is 10.123.132.169. The Comcast DNS then gives your machine the address 10.123.132.169 to get the web page. Bet you never thought all that was going on did you!

To reduce all of this traffic, a DNS caches, or remembers who he has asked about. So now if someone else asks the Comcast DNS where is www.google.com, he remembers it and does not have to ask root. A DNS only remembers for a specific amount of time, from 24 to 1 hour. In the past it was a week, and this caused problems, because if I moved www.google to another server, thus another address. But the Comcast server would still be giving out the old address for 7 days, so now most are 24 hours. (its called TTL or Time To Live)

HOSTING

Hosting is where a computer program is run. In our case it's a web server. A server is a computer much like the one you have at home, but industrial grade, it has redundant systems in it to keep running in case of failure. So it has multiple power supplies and multiple hard drives. This "server" runs an operating system, Linux (UNIX) or Windows Server. The operating system or "OS" on your computer is probably Windows XP, Vista or Win7. So the SERVER is running a program to display web pages, this makes it a (you guessed it) "WEB SERVER". This is where you put the web pages that you or I created.

EMAIL, now sometimes your email can be on the same server as your web pages, or they may put it on a different server. Most large hosting providers separate all of the types of servers. One for web pages, one for email and one for databases.

TEM SOLUTIONS

Now the real questions! COST! To create a VERY basic web site like Bob's Woodworking (without the pay pal) I charge $25 an hour, and it's 12 to 16 hours to create the pages, configure the DNS, set up the hosting, create the accounts, and the email addresses. That's $300 to $400 just to start. After that it's still $25 an hour, billed in 4 hour blocks in advance. I log time on projects in 15 minute intervals, so if I spend anything less that 15 minutes on something, it's logged as 15 minutes. All of your project time is ONLINE for you to see how much time I currently have logged on your project.

You will also have to pay for your domain name, that's $10 PER YEAR.

Once you have that, you will need a hosting plan, my most inexpensive plan is $3.99 a month.

You don't have to use my domain name or hosting services to use me as your web designer. But as I point out on my home page, it makes for a very seamless and easy setup. Otherwise I may be wasting time figuring out how your hosting provider has things configured, or having you call them to get some configuration changed on your account. You get the idea.

The bottom line for me is customer service, there is no passing the buck with me because I am IT. You talk to me directly and there is no miscommunication on the direction we are moving.

I look forward to working with you!