Website Hosting

Basics of HTML 5 - Part 20

Foreword: In this part of the series, I explain how to host your website.

By: Chrysanthus Date Published: 4 Apr 2015

Introduction

This is part 20 of my series, Basics of HTML 5. I assume you have read the previous parts of the series before arriving here; this is a continuation. In this part of the series, I explain how to host your website.

The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web abbreviated, WWW is a network (connection) of computers all over the world. It is also called the Internet. Each of these computers is called a Host. Some of these computers are serving others. The ones that are serving are called servers. The ones that are being served are called clients. If your computer at home is said to be connected to the Internet, then that computer is a client.

A Web Site
A web site is a collection of related web pages. A web site to be seen by Internet client computers is housed in a server. This housing is called Hosting. Remember that a web page at the server is a file. The web pages are related by hyperlinks.

The home page has to be in the root (hone) directory. The home page HTML file has one of four names: it can be index.htm or index.html or default.htm or default.html. index.html is common and I suggest you use it. The hyperlinks on the home page should lead you to other pages. To access the home page, the user does not have to type the file name in the URL. The website address such as www.somesite.com is enough (URL) to have the home page displayed at the browser.

After designing a web page, test it if it works with the major browsers. In the previous tutorial, the figcaption element appeared below the image (figure) in Mozilla Firefox browser, but did not appear below the image in Opera. So I added a line break (<br>) element just after the image in the code. With this adjustment, the figcaption element appeared below the image in both browsers. So when you test your web page in the major browsers, make any adjustment that may be necessary, in the code.

Domain Name
A typical Domain name is yahoo.com. A domain name refers to the most important page of your web site, called the Home Page. The domain name means your web site. If you type just “yahoo.com” in the address bar of your browser and click Go, the browser will display the home page of the Yahoo search engine company. Strictly speaking, you should type, http://www.yahoo.com at the address bar. http is abbreviation for the technology the Internet uses to display web pages at the client from the server. “://” has to follow http. Here www is a sub domain name. Sub domains break a big web site into smaller web sites. The Yahoo Company has at least two sub domains, which are www and mail. So you may hear of http://mail.yahoo.com. The mail sub domain is for Yahoo emails.

The web page your domain name is referring to, must be in the root directory of your web site in the server. This page (home page) should have hyperlinks to some pages of your web site. The pages link to, should have links to more pages. This is the normal way to link all the pages of your web site. The home page must have the name, index.htm or index.html or default.htm or default.html. You can create sub directories (folders) inside your root directory and put some of your web pages in the sub directories.

Assume that you have a sub directory called, dir1 in your root directory and you have another sub directory, called dir2 in dir1. Assume also that you have a web page file in the directory, dir2, called myfile.htm. Assume as well that the name of your domain is mysite.com. To access myfile.htm from the server in the directory, dir2, you should type in the address bar of your browser:

            mysite.com/dir1/dir2/myfile.htm

or

           http://www.mysite.com/dir1/dir2/myfile.htm

If the file were in the root directory, to access it you would type:

            mysite.com/myfile.htm

or

           http://www.mysite.com/myfile.htm

Service Provider
ISP is abbreviation for Internet Service Provider. An Internet Service Provider is a company that provides Internet Services. One of such services is web hosting, which this last part of the series is about. When you contact an ISP he tells you how to get a domain name and possibly a sub domain name. Your domain name must be unique in the world. What you should note here is that the domain name you would want for your site might have been taken by someone else. The good ISPs give you possible other names you can choose from. In order for an ISP to host your site, you have to register with him and pay some money. All this arrangement can be done online, today.

The Design Phase
A question is, “How would you be sure if what you have design with your computer at home or office would appear on the Internet as it appeared in your home or office?” The answer to this question is that there are web servers (software) you can install in you home or office computer. Software that can attend to different client computers is also called a server. You can design and save your web pages in directories meant to be used by such a server in your home or office computer. The thing to note with such servers in your personal computer is, that there is only one possible domain name. This domain name is, localhost. So the above URLs in your PC would become,

           localhost/dir1/dir2/myfile.htm

           http://localhost/dir1/dir2/myfile.htm

           localhost/myfile.htm

           http://localhost/myfile.htm

An example of such a server (software) is Apache HTTP Server. This server is also used in the Internet. Installing this server in your personal computer is easy; just read the server’s documentation or readme file. You can download the server free from the Internet. The documentation or readme file tells you where the root directory is (see below).

After using this server (software) to create your web site and everything is fine in your PC, change all “localhost” in the links to http://www.mysite.com. After that you can upload the files to the hosting server.

If you go into any computer pool, somebody will always point one of the physical computers as the server. So we can say there are two kinds of servers. A software server and a hardware server. A software server is a software package in any computer that can serve different software (e.g. browsers) in different client computers. A hardware server is a computer that serves other computers (clients) with computer network facilities (at the end of the day, both types of servers are software servers, since it is software in the hardware server that controls the network).

Uploading Files
After registering with your ISP he will give you a password or you will choose one, depending on him. To access your site in his server, you must use this password. Another thing you must use in order to access your site is a user name (login name). Note that this name can be an email address that both of you will decide on. There are at least three items to use in order to access your site at the server. I have given you two. The last item is called the FTP Host name. The FTP host name might be something like this: www.yahoo.com. You make arrangement with your hosting company (ISP) to have these three items.

You use at least these three items to have your access opened to a web site of an Internet server. You and/or the ISP can decide on these three values. Just after registering with the ISP, the ISP establishes these items for you. He also creates a directory for your web site in his server. Now, we said that the HTML5 file for your home page has to be in the root directory of your web site at the server. Well, the ISP actually hosts many sites in one hard disk. So he configures his server computer in such a way that you may think your home page is at his root directory. After registration, he should indicate to you how to get to your directory (when the access is opened).

Uploading Program
You need an uploading program to upload your files from your office or personal computer, to the server in the Internet. One of the ones I have is called, Core FTP LE. It is free. You can go to the Internet, search for the program and download it. If you want some other program or if you want to buy an equivalent program from the Internet, search for “FTP upload program”. If you go to Google.com for example and type, “FTP upload program” without the quotes, and click Search, you would see a list of them displayed in front of you.

The program I have, mentioned above, is easy to use; just go to its HELP. When you start the program, a main window opens and a smaller one with the title, “Site Manager” also opens. The Help button is on the main window. In order to click the Help button, you have to dismiss the Site Manager window first. You do this by clicking the Close button of the Site Manager window.

While reading the Help document, do not forget to find out where (the control fields) you would type the password, the login (user name) and FTP Host name.

I have given you the basics on File Upload for your web site.

We are toward the end of this part of the series and toward the end of the series. It was a long ride. It was surely worth it. You should now be able to design functional web sites. Read the next section to know what to do after this.

What to do with the Knowledge achieved
If you have understood everything in this series, that is fine. You should start trying to design web pages (not at the commercial level). You should be able to design simple website with a few colors. When you see a website on the Internet, try to design it using the knowledge you have gained from this series. Some, you will be able to design; others you will not be able.

Where to go from Here
The next series to learn after this is Cascaded Style Sheet (CSS). The link, “Major in Website Design” below, leads you there. After that you will learn ECMAScript Basics. These are two other computer languages you have to learn. There are other series along the line, you will learn also. After all that, if you understand much of it, you will be a professional web site designer and you will be able to design professional websites. In other words, the websites you design will have professional look and feel. This means that you will be able to design websites for commercial purpose.

All these language tutorials are in my blog. There is an advanced level to all this: Each of the languages has tutorials after the professional level. If you cover all the tutorials in my blog for the languages (including the advanced topics) and you understand, then you will be a master in website design. After the professional level, you can start looking for website design jobs (projects). After the advanced topics, you can become a website design supervisor. You now know where to go from here.

Well, we should end here.

And this is the end of the series.

GOOD LUCK!

Chrys

Broad Network

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