Often times people or most coders of web development asked this question; “how do I get my website to the web or internet?” I have tried to explain for several of them and am here again to talk about it.
Something cannot just happen in a vacuum as there must something that leads to others. So in putting your site on the web there must be guidelines to follow which I am going to discuss some of them here.
There are two basic things to note in order to put your site on the web which are domain name and a web hosting. A domain name is the name of your site that people will search for on the web browser and web hosting is a company that helps to hold your data (source code) on their web server.
DOMAIN NAMES
Think for example google.com, yahoo.com and facebook.com etc; these are domain names for this website which users can search for on the web browsers and all the contents will be display to them to view. Your domain name is your web address.
Just like username on social media or any other website that allow for input and registration or creating account, you are not allowed to use the same username with anybody else in the whole world. No two persons can use the same username in the globe so same things happen in domain name. Your domain name can never be the same with another website domain name and of course, the hosting company will notify you that, that domain name already exist just like when you are about to choose a username on your social media account.
The consequent of this is that, you will not be found on search engine as there will be perplexity. Your domain name makes your site unique from others and can easily be identify by search engine when search for. Better to be seen on search results below five or even ten than never as a result of trying to use same domain name that is popular.
To constantly keep this unique domain name of your website, most hosting companies will demand for annual payment to keep that your domain name yours. Because they will be the ones to maintain and protect it from being use by another intending user of that same domain name hence they need the money. These sites usually have a form that allows you to check whether your preferred domain name is available, and because millions of domain names have already been registered, it might take you a while to find the one that is right and available for your site. So maintain patience while looking for and get a unique domain name for your website.
While you two persons cannot bear the same domain name, there are other alternative if you really love the name you intend to use which is, instead of .com you can change yours to .net, .org or .ng, .info, .edu, .gov etc but the consequence in this is that, the category for your website will be misleading.
What I mean is that, for .com – commercial/company, .net – network, .org – organization and .ng – Nigeria so if your website is about company/commercial and you used .org instead of .com people will get confused about the category of your site. Choose the right URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for your website.
My next post will be on Web Hosting that is to say, how do you choose or know the right web hosting companies. Who are they and what do they do with your content (source code) etc. keep in touch.
