This fun puzzle game with Lili will explain the most basic concept of having own website. It will not make you a website. This procces is actually very time consuming, experimental and need a lot of knowledge in different computer science fields, but these 6 steps are always needed.
1. Create a web page. The internet is flooded with templates and CMSs for websites. But you can create a website from a scratch. What you need is:
1.1. Have a Great idea. Think of something, that will make you different from the others, and may have a lot of unique content.
1.2. Learn HTML basis. It is best to have a full control of your website.
1.3. Use text redactor. Write your HTML code in a plain text redactor, like Notepad. Then rename the file from .txt to .html and here is your first web page. A website is a sum of many web pages.
2. Get a domain. To be accessible online, a website need to have and address. This addresses are the strange writings, that appear in the Address Bar on your browser. They are called domain names.
2.1. Top Domains. Your site must have an unique domain, like google.com or wikipedia.org. The top domains are never free. You need to find a domain service company and pay for the domain every year.
2.2. Subdomains. Subdomain may be free. They are domains under another primary domain, like blogspot.com. When you create a blog website there, it's address will be a subdomain, like yourblog.blogspot.com
3. Get a Hosting. Hosting means, the place where your website will be stored, so when you are sleeping, your website will be accessible online. You can create your own computer to be a server and leave it the whole day night to be connected to the Internet. Basically it is a hard disc connected all time to internet.
3.1. Free hosting. When you are in the experimental phase, you can get a free hosting service, there are a lot of them. They will offer almost every functionality, storage and traffic, that a paid hosting have, except reliability. So when your site goes down, or the service is just gone one day, do not blame them, after all it is free.
3.2. Paid hosting. When you get serious, get a paid hosting. You will be already familliar with all the functionality. So geting hosting is actually renting a computer (server) connected to the internet all the time.
4. Link the domain to the hosting. Now you must make 2 more steps to set your site.
4.1. Add your domain name to the hosting service. Your hosting provider will offer a setting interface. Find where it says "add domain" and type your domain name there. For planeta 42 it is planeta42.com
4.2. Set the Dinamic Name Servers DNS. Your hosting provider will also give you two or more Name Servers and the interface must have something that says "DNS" or "Name Servers" settings. Go there and copy/paste them exactly like tre provider gave them.
5. Upload the web pages. The first 4 steps are made once. Next step is repeatable. It is time to upload your website from step 1. to the hosting you have. This process is continuous, so when you make changes to your website, you must upload it again. How to do that:
5.1. Usea FTP program. There are number of programs to easily transfer files to the hosting server, like Cute FTP. Your hosting provider will give you a server to connect, username and password to do that.
5.2. Trough the hosting service interface. You can either use the interface of yout hosting provider to upload files on your hosting server.
6. You have a website! In 2 days Your website will be online and running. And do not expect miracles, at first no one will know of it, but in many many years, if you maintain it and talk about it, it may get a few visitors ;)
