What is...

...a domain?

If you are running Windows, we can easily explain how all of this works. First of all, you have disk space containing your files and folders - this is your stored content (website content is what appears in the browser window when you access your website). The Internet doesn't know where to find your content, and so it needs a pointer. This is like a Windows shortcut - you have the files in one place, but you can have a shortcut icon on the desktop, or wherever.

On the Internet, the shortcut pointer is called a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL. This is what you type into a browser when you want to access a particular website. The default URL for a given website is an IP address. An IP address is a series of numbers and dots that the Internet uses to find your content. An example of an IP address is '217.69.34.167' - we won't bore you with a breakdown of how the Internet uses it to find your computer!

Clearly, an IP address is not very easy for most human beings to remember, so Domain Name Services (DNS) were set up to map domain names (e.g. 'internetgremlin.com') to IP addresses. Designated computers, called DNS servers, act as ushers to show the Internet where to find the computer matching a given domain name. You can type http://www.internetgremlin.com or http://217.69.34.167 into a browser - either format is acceptable. This also works with e-mail addresses.

Because we are dealing with pointers, many domain names can point to a single disk space. Thus, you could register lots of domains and have them all point to one website. Another service we can offer is to forward all mail sent to <anything>@<yourdomain>.com to <you>@<yourISP> - this gives a more professional image.

...hosting?

Website files must be made available to users in as straightforward a way as possible, and on demand. If you wanted to do this for yourself, you would need a powerful computer to cope with the number of users accessing the content - if it takes more than about seven seconds to download your homepage, they are unlikely to stick around and wait. You would also need a permanent connection to the Internet, so that the files are available 24 hours a day, along with server software to give out the data on request, and to handle many users accessing the same data all at once. You also have the security of the rest of your system to think about - by making some of your files available, you are indicating where the private ones are also likely to be stored...

Don't panic!

A simple and cost effective alternative is to find someone else to provide the storage, connectivity and services necessary to serve your website files. Make a list of the features you know you will need from your website, such as the amount of disk space, multimedia, etc. and start from there. Many of our customers tell us that they consider the most important point to be flexibility. Their websites and businesses may evolve in a variety of directions - depending on the performance of their products and services, emerging techology, technical skill of inhouse personnel and many other factors - and this is why they appreciate the ability to be able to make certain changes to their existing hosting arrangements with us without any hassle.

There are two sorts of hosting arrangement: dedicated hosting and shared hosting. The difference is simply whether you share the server with other customers, or have one all to yourself. If the server running your website is very busy all the time, whether it's because you receive a lot of visitors and/or because you have a lot of complex programs running, a dedicated server would be best for you. If you are unsure what you need, shared hosting is the easiest to start with. As with most of our other packages, if you find you need to move to a dedicated server, simply e-mail us and we will sort it all out for you.

Some of our customers' websites receive a lot of visitors (and we mean a lot), and so we have installed load-balanced server farms at their office locations around the country (and in three cases, around the world). Imagine each user is a shopper at your local supermarket. Instead of joining a long queue to pay for your goods, you would look to see if there are any cashiers free and move to a different till if it would be quicker for you to do so. This is exactly what load-balancing devices do: they balance the incoming users across a number of powerful computers serving the same website, thus minimising the users' file download times. Clever, eh?

...a list server?

Just like a web server, a list server passes on data to users, but this time via e-mail. The 'list' in question, is a list of e-mail addresses belonging to users subscribed to a particular discussion or annoucement group. For example, you could create a discussion list for people who met at a recent conference, an announcement list to let your customers know when your website has been updated, and so on. When an authorised person sends an e-mail to the distribution e-mail address associated with a given discussion or announcement list, the list server reads it and automatically forwards it to all the e-mail addresses subscribed to that list.

An e-mail list can be hidden from public view, so that you allow users to subscribe by invitation only. You can also specify that you want to personally approve all subscription requests before users are allowed to join. Alternatively, you can advertise your list to the general public, perhaps as part of a marketing campaign or simply to encourage to come and join in! The easiest way to produce a successful mailing list is to provide a forum those where subscribers have a particular interest in common, so think about a focus very carefully when putting your list together and publicising it.