A domain name is the name of a website eg. www.yahoo.com . Before you obtain this name as an internet address, there are some stages you will have to go through.

First, think of a name, about three of them. Then check if it is available. The internet does not allow coincidence of names so if the name you want has been chosen by somebody else, you cannot have. Why is it so? Assuming, there are two websites on the internet called www.yahoo.com and another is called www.yahoo.comwhich is operated by different companies. If a surfer goes to the net and types www.yahoo.com, which one should be shown to the visitor? Or assume Volunteers of America and Voice of America have the same website acronym www.voa.com. Will you feel comfortable if you want Voice of America and Volunteers of American pops up on the screen? For this conflict to be avoided there should be only one instance of a domain name. Additionally, one single body should be responsible for maintaining a database of these names so it can be sure that no one else had registered this name.

Now there are a lot of domain names but they all have the basic parts. We have the name of the domain , say yahoo and the .com is the tld or top level domain. The tld describes the type of entity the domain is. So .com stands for commercial., .net stands for network,, . info stands for information, .org stands for organization, .edu stands for education., .ac stands for academic etc. There are country domains too like .jp for Japan, .

When you register a domain name, actually you are obtaining an IP address which is numeric in nature. A typical IP address is 192.168.10.1 But humans can remember names better than number so there is a machine that translates this number into a name like www.yahoo.com. If you need the site, you do not type the number but the name. Also, companies will have to be identified by their unique names so numbers will not serve a good purpose.

Organizational identity is a very important feature in domain name registration, and that is why some domains may have to be reserved for certain reasons. For example, www.usarmy.gov is a specialized domain and there is only one such organization in the world. So a name like this may have to be reserved. Otherwise, somebody can register this name and make it unavailable when the US government, the rightful owner, wants it. Should a name be insincerely so obtained, we say the one has registered the name in bad faith. There are checks over this kind of activity.

The body responsible for the registration of domain names is called ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN has a number of accredited agents or registrars who register various types of domains on its behalf.

After you register the name , your details are kept on a server. So users can access your web pages through that address. So if anyone types your website address,. the browser sends a request to the server holding your details, then the web page is fetched for you.

When you change a hosting service, you will have to provide your new host with technical details relating to where your domain name is located. The reason is that, your website name, say www.you.com will have to be matched to your numeric name (remember) residing on a server at where you registered your domain. We call this domain transfer.

If you register a new domain, it will take about 72 hours to become available on the entire internet. This is because the “news” of the registration will have to broadcast across the net gradually. As you await this broadcast, which is technically called propagation, you will be given the machine address of your website so you can access it. Normally, after registration, the sign “under Construction” will be put there awaiting full content.

A domain name will expire after the length of period you bought it for.. Actually we rent domain names, we don’t buy. So it is important to renew it. If you don’t, the name will become available after expiry and someone else can buy it.

The term webmaster has been used in several connotations over the years. To some it means a web designer whereas to others it means a web server technician. Actually a webmaster does more than that.

A webmaster’s duties are a blend of web design skills, web marketing and administrative functions.

Primarily, a webmaster manages websites hosted on a server. He may not necessarily be the designer but he has the fine skills of making sure that viewers are able to asses the pages within the website and that the site functions well. So he has the qualities and technical knowledge of a web designer, a web developer and a software guru.

A webmaster also serves as an advisor on web technologies and updates for the principal of the sites he works on. He closely monitors events taking place in the internet world and recommends or advises against which practices to adopt and which to drop.

He is also concerned with the marketing of the websites and affiliates programs. Web marketing doesn’t necessarily mean placing adverts and running promotions. It also involves optimizing the web pages so that search engines are able to index them . This way web surfers can easily find the site and thus maintain or increase traffic.

Web content is dynamic and several changes may be made to a website during its hosting lifetime. A webmaster maintains the code and documentation for s website so that reference can be easily made to it in the future for upgrades, trouble shooting or appraisal. A webmaster may leave a job for another to take over. In the course of this transition, records on how the site is structured should be made available to the one taking over for study and mastery so he know how the site functions and which method to apply for updates. Remember that a website code also contains something we call comments which shows why a particular program was written and what it is supposed to do. This feature is very important if a changeover occurs so you know exactly what works at which place.

A webmaster also maintains the software aspect of a server. I mean the programming aspect. A server has two meanings depending on your perspective: it can be the physical cabinet-like machines we find at ISPs or a software used to share or distribute data. The hardware aspect of a server like installation of extra hard disks etc is managed by a technician but installation of scripts like perl modules and PHP are managed by the webmaster. He manages these scripts to enhance the operation of the sites hosted on the server. Scripts are very important if you want to run dynamic websites like chatting sites, database sites , etc. Scripts are just small programs that automate otherwise laborious or repetitive processes. Think of emailing newsletters to ten thousand subscribers. It will be time consuming to sit at a machine and send the newsletters one by one. A script does that conveniently.

Obviously, a webmaster also updates or maintains the contents of a website. He fixes scripts and repairs broken hyperlinks. A website is never static. Occasionally or frequently, you may have to make changes. A webmaster does that.

A webmaster also takes feedback from the site visitors and translates these comments into improved service for the website. It is necessary to monitor site users and carve a website to suit their taste. A website thrives on its traffic. Once you get the traffic coming, they will look at the content. You can have nice content but if you don’t keep monitoring your site visitor perceptions, you may not serve them well. Perhaps, demand and supply also applies in web dynamics too,

Lastly, a webmaster sets up websites on a host machine. He can register your domain name and then put the web pages on a server to be accessed by visitors.

To become a webmaster, you will need to know web technologies. You should have excellent knowledge of web design, web development (i.e. programming) and then server management. There are a lot of certifications to prepare you for this job but the widely known is Certified Internet Webmaster.

So, next time you visit a website and find “Contact Webmaster” at the foot of the page, you know the guy there has more stuff in his head than Archimedes: He is Jack of all trades, master of all (not none).

Bandwidth refers to the use of resources on a website. It can also be defined as the amount of data that is sent to and from a website over a given period. Specifically, it refers to how many times a resource is called from a server through your website. So anytime a page is called from your website, you are consuming bandwidth. If a script is called upon to process some information, you are consuming more bandwidth. This is because script processing uses more CPU and hard disk power. Whenever a person visits a site to undertake an activity, some computer hardware or software is called upon to do some task.

From this description, it follows that web hosts should charge clients differently according to the amount of resources consumed on a site. For this reason, there is a bandwidth limit for websites on a server. If you exceed the limit, then you ought to pay some extra to compensate for the wear and tear you exert on the hosts’ facilities.

There is a simple way to calculate your bandwidth needs. If a visitor clicks on a 2KB picture, you are using 2KB of bandwidth. Now look at your access logs ( that is, the statistics on your website) to see the total number of pages being viewed in a day and their total size. 1 Gigabyte views a day means 30 gigabytes a month. If your host has allowed only 20 gig, then you can calculate in advance that you need an extra 10 gig so you upgrade your hosting to that amount before you are surprised with a bill.

Given that, it is always advisable to reduce bandwidth as much as possible on your site. Some people resort to a bad practice called bandwidth theft in this regard. Instead of putting large images on their sites, they will rather link to another site. So when visitors click on the image in their site, the picture is actually called from a different site and the second party pays for the bandwidth. Apart from the fact that this practice is unethical, there is a hidden danger of broken hyperlinks. If the image ceases to exist, your link will not work. Also images linked this way, open slow.

There are various way to reduce bandwidth.

Make your files small. If they are images, compress them with a graphics tool. Also avoid video and sound files as these tend to draw a lot of bandwidth. Another way is to split long pages on a site into smaller units to avoid server drag as the page is called from the site. Where possible, use client based scripts to limit server load. A client based script is a program that will do all its processing in the browser instead of the server. A common browser based program is javascript. If you are permitting downloads on your site, make sure that your files are zipped to make them small.
Remember that , there is a limit to which you can economize on bandwidth. Low bandwidth means, slow access to your website. You don’t want visitors to waste a lot of time in obtaining information from your website. Do you?

A dedicated web server is a web server you lease from the hosting company. The web server is dedicated to your needs only; no other customers of the hosting company have access to any portion of the dedicated server. The hosting company is responsible for the server hardware, the operating system and any other software you may have them install for you (typically a database engine or scripting support). Once the server is setup by the hosting company, you are free to load your software onto the server.

This solution provides you with the widest flexibility in what you can load onto your server (within the limits of the hosting company’s contract). Dedicated web hosting is also better suited for mission critical applications, since possible side-affects of other sites hosted by the company are minimized. Since the hosting company owns the server and you simply lease the server, any hardware problems are the responsibility of the hosting company to resolve.

To manage your web server, most hosting company’s make a control panel available via the web. Through the control panel you have access to most all the functionality of the server.

While this may sound like the best possible solution, that is not always the case. If you need specialized hardware this may not be supported by your hosting provider; most hosting provides have a list of authorized hardware for their dedicated servers, this makes maintenance easier. While the hosting company owns the server, if you install software that causes problems on the server the hosting company can fix the issues but you may have to pay as much as $200 per hour for support.

This solution may be best for you if your site gets lots of visitors, uses a lot of system resources (through the use of CGI scripts or ASP), if it will house important data or if you have special software needs not supported on a virtual server. A dedicate web server typically is faster than virtual servers and since the server is dedicated, the data is more secure too.

Colocation Servers

Colocation (also known as Co-Location) is when you purchase the server, configure it the way you need and then have a hosting company put the server in their data center. The hosting provider is connected to the web and monitored by the hosting provider. Aside from rack space, power and internet connectivity, the hosting provider doesn’t provide any other services for your server.

Some of the main advantages to colocation hosting are that you have complete control over the hardware in your server. This allows you to select the components that will provide the best performance for your needs. This also allows you to load any software you might need for your web site (always check with your hosting provider since many maintain a list of software products with known security problems that they may not allow in their data center). You can load your software and optimize the server configuration prior to shipping it to the hosting provider so that everything will work exactly as you need.

This method of web hosting is not without its downsides: if any piece of equipment in your server fails, it is your responsibility to have it repaired. The hosting company can perform the maintenance on the server for a price, but you must supply the hardware. The maintenance of any software installed on your server is your responsibility too. Upgrading your database engine is not a task the hosting company would perform, along with installing patches.

This method may be you best choice if you have unique hardware or software requirements, have sensitive data stored on your server or your application is mission critical. This solution also gives you 100% control over your web server, so you can load and reload your software as often as you like, you can determine when to take you server down and when to have maintenance performed.