How to place a website on the Internet: 4 steps
A website is an online platform that represents your business or personal project on the Internet. It can advertise your product or blog, build trust in your brand or personality, and inform visitors where your office is located and how they can contact you. Its task is to maintain contact with your visitors around the clock, respond to their information and commercial requests and maintain your reputation. We talk about how to place a website on the Internet and thereby make the project accessible and recognizable to millions of users.
How does a page get on the Internet?
Users on the Internet are trying to find data that can satisfy their intent – a request for information or a product. Texts, images, videos and other types of content are located on a web page. Each file has its own place thanks to web markup, and is designed using styles. Programming languages add functionality to the site. Thus, a website is a collection of HTML, CSS and PHP files (or files from another scripting programming language). To make web pages accessible to users and able to respond to their requests, you need to place the site on the Internet. For a small web resource, there is only one way to achieve this – saving it on a web server.
How to place your website on the Internet
When the webmaster has already developed the structure of the site, created its layout and laid out the web pages, he has an archive with web resource files. At the next stage, he needs to place the site on the Internet. To do this, he will need reliable storage for files – a productive and capacious server with Internet access, as well as a memorable project address, indicating which in the address bar of the browser, users will send a request to receive content. We offer instructions for those who are starting their project for the first time and do not know how to host a website.
Step 1. Domain registration
In order for users to find your web resource on the Internet, it needs an identifier. At the same time, it should be simple, recognizable and easy to remember. This is important for loyal visitors who, when visiting the site again, will have to remember and reproduce its unique name in the address bar of the browser. A human-readable and short address for a web resource on the Internet is a domain name. Select several options that users will associate with your brand and theme; for us, this is “ruweb”. In addition, the part of the name starting after the dot, that is, the domain zone, must contain an indication of what type of activity you are engaged in or what area your users are from. Our website zone is .net, which informs users that our company’s activities are related to network technologies. Check made-up names for employment using the Whois service. Register the best domain for your project. Remember that in most zones you can only rent a domain for a year, then you will need to renew it.
Step 2. Choosing a hosting
Hosting can be of different types. It is selected based on the size, complexity and needs of the project. Dedicated servers are the most powerful storage, VPS are for medium and large online portals, and for small web resources just starting their development – virtual hosting. The type of hosting determines the amount of computing resources with which the site owner plans to ensure the functionality and availability of the project.
In addition to standard resources in the form of space on HDD/SSD, RAM and core power, when choosing hosting, the site administrator should pay attention to the geography of placement of server and network equipment (the closer to the audience of the web resource, the faster information will be transferred), the availability of security technologies (DDoS protection, availability of SSL certificates) and the compatibility of the server with software important for the project (programming languages, database management systems, etc.). Novice system administrators will also be more comfortable working with a service that has a free trial period and the ability to automatically install popular CMS from the control panel.
How to order hosting:
- On the website, select a tariff plan and click the “Order” button.
- Register in the billing panel.
- Make an activation payment.
Step 3. Linking the domain to hosting
In the third step, the site already has a “home” and an address. Now you have to link them together so that the server knows that the request from the user is addressed to it, and it must find the necessary files in its memory and give them to the browser to render the web page. This setting is performed via DNS. Find the “Manage DNS Zones” item in your hosting control panel. Enter the selected website address in the “Domain Names” field. The IP address field specifies the digital identifier of the server by which it is found by other devices connected to the network. Click “Next”.
Step 4. Hosting the site
All that remains is to upload the archive with the site files to the server. This will require SSH and FTP data transfer protocols. The easiest and fastest way to host a website is through the hosting control panel. Upload the archive with site files to the root directory and import the database. If the DNS servers have been changed, the site will be activated within 24 hours.
Conclusion
We’ve covered several steps for posting a web page online. Now you are ready to start promoting your project on the Internet.
