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Having your own place on the internet sounds exciting - yet it can be daunting for those that have never ventured into the realms of creating their first website. At HostingStar we understand how confusing the many technical terms can be and strive to make the whole process of getting your website online as simple a process as possible.

How to get online

• Step 1 - Design and Build Your Pages
• Get hold of some descent software such as Dreamweaver. If this is too pricey, try CoffeeCup which has a free 30 day trial. This software helps you create your HTML pages, (HTML is the language that web Browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer understand). With these tools you can build your pages in an environment similar to using Microsoft Word, without having to understand the intricacies of HTML. You may see this type of tool advertised as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
• Step 2 - Register a Domain Name
• A domain name is the actual address that you want your website to answer to. For example, Google own the rights to use the domain name 'Google.com' and we own the rights to use the domain name 'HostingStar.co.uk'. When you register a domain, you get exclusive rights to have your website at that address for that period. A domain name is registered through a company such as us, who are agents to the government run Internet Registry for that Top Level Domain (co.uk/com/org/etc are all top level domains, each of which has an internet registry).
• A common mistake with domains is considering the 'www' as part of the domain name. This is not the case, as this is a subdomain. You may own the domain mywebsite.com, but have two separate websites available at www.mywebsite.com and vvv.mywebsite.com. You can have multiple subdomains per domain, each of which can point to a different website. 'www' is used for most websites, but this is simply convention.
• Step 3 - Buy Hosting
• Hosting is simply a place on the internet at which to put your website. When you buy hosting, you are renting space on a massively powerful computer (or 'server'), which has a super-reliable connection to the internet. In theory, you can host a website on your own home computer; however this is not advised as your computer must always be switched on and connected to the internet. Also, the web traffic of people visiting your website will throttle your internet connection degrading the service you receive.
• The variation in cost of packages offered is usually accounted for in the amount of space that you are purchasing and the amount of bandwidth you will receive. Web space is measured in Megabytes (Mb) or Gigabytes(Gb - 1000Mb). The more web space that you have the larger your website can be. Bandwidth (or 'transfer') is measured in Gigabytes and is a monthly measure of how many times your website can be viewed or downloaded. If your website is 1Mb in size and you have 1Gb of bandwidth your website can be viewed 1000 times per month. In reality each webpage is much smaller than 1Mb in size.
• Step 4 - Point your domain to your hosting
• This step is not required if you purchase your domain name and your hosting from the same company.
• When you type a domain name into a web browser, in the background your browser consults a DNS (Domain Name Server) server which tells your browser where your website is hosted. The DNS server acts much like a telephone directory, and maps the domain name to a web server's IP address.
• You need to update the DNS servers for your domain name so that when your visitors type in your domain name their browser is pointed to your web hosting. You can usually do this by logging in to a controlpanel, or by contacting your domain registrar.
• If you are hosting with us, our DNS server addresses are:
  ns.mainnameserver.com
  ns2.mainnameserver.com