before intending to make your own website , you must ask your self the following questions:

1- What is the purpose of your website?

2- How will people find your site?

3- What are you going to do to make visitors linger at your site?

4- What do you want visitors to do once they are at your site?

5- How are you going to get people to come back to your site?

6- How are you monitoring going to monitor the results of your website?

after answering the previous questions …. you must know what does website really consists of ? , and how it works ? ….. then  it’s time to build your website ……

The website is just like network sharing files and documents , to let other network user get what they  need …. from your computer :

1- Computer that carry the  files and documents
2- network connection with virtual IP

3- brower (just like sharing programs or like regular windows browser ) to allow the network users to view the shared files  ….

the website just like sharing files and written pages within network (the internet ) to let the network users viewing the shared files and pages ……

as the previous example , it can be applied for the websites

1- computer to host the files ..called hosting server
2- internet connection that have a suitable speed and Bandwidth ( amount of online data transfer ) .
3- Script (that represent the interface and management files software  ) or you can just programming your own website (management or interface) using Html , PHP, JavaScript ,…

by applying the previous conditions , so you can host your own website to your computer (as a hosting server) , but you will face some issues like:
1- you will need a high speed internet connection with high bandwidth to make your website fast to visitors requests
2- you need a high speed computer to be able to processing the different users requests (as every user on your website may make a different requests from the other visitor like open different pages , writing comments ,….  ) so computer  requirements must be increased  in Direct proportional with users increase)
3- you must be sure that your computer will not shutdown , power off or system fail- so you need electric generator to provide elecctricity if cut out , and linux system for high security and stability (linux is the perfect choice for hosting servers)

Hint: there is also marketing related to search engines optimization issues that happens for frequently website stops or slow down , so it affect directly to the number of website visitors

the previous problems of self website hosting in the other side ,  the high security and the cheap prices of hosting companies  makes almost website owners takes hosting from them …

-after getting your own hosting , their is a big question their , how can i display my website content , what’s its address  ….. so you will need a name for it (called  domain name) , to easly log in and (view the content , edit , write comments ,and also be available for any visitors ,….)
if you didn’t get domain name , the only way to enter your website content is to type The IP of your hosting in your web browser , but it’s hard for you and for your visitors to enter your website using that bad method (for example typing 178.33.255.46  to enter the wikileaks website )so you will surely need a Domain name for your website for easly login like (itexpert.net , google.com or yahoo.com)

lets know more about websites name (domain names) and its features ….

Domain Name:

as we refered previously , This is your website name just like ITExpert.net or yahoo.com , it has two main features that you should know :
1- You can make any number of pages within your domain as (http://www.itexpert.net/photos-titanic-deep-ocean/) and publish in each a different content and may with a different style ….
2- You can make subdomain , just like mail.yahoo.com or blog.itexpert.net and you can setup a new website on this subdomain that means with only one domain you can make any numbers of subdomain , each can be treated as an independent website to publish and design each of them as you want

You can reserve your domain name from companies like:
1- Godaddy.com
2- Yahoo.com
3- Sedo.com
There prices range from 1.99$ to 20$ , there is also featured domains that prices is higher than the previous values as it may reach up to 100,000$ !!!

Hosting:

it is the computer that carrying the website (named hosting server) , its main factors is :
1- computer speed (ram , processor , cash)
2- bandwidth (the amount of data transfer it measured as …GB/month) , example: if you upload 1MB image to your website , and there its visit is 1000 viewer , then your bandwidth usage = 1MB*1000 visitors = 1GB used of your bandwidth
3- hard disk (important for big sites as the script and programming codes doesn’t need a high capacity hard disk)

Hint: some hosting companies can provide you with free domain name (as offer)

you can reserve your hosting from companies like:
1- CertifiedHosting
2- Ipage

Script:

you can program your own website using Html,CSS,JavaScript,PHP,ASP….languages

or you can use ready programmed script to easily reach your objective , it looks like the computer management software (like windows xp ,linux,windows server,….in the regular computer) but for the website managements …. it’s the interface make (write , edit , modify ,…. your website) …. easily

The Most Famous Scripts is:
- wordpress,drupal,… script for blogging system
- Joomla for complete CMS (Complete management system)
- Vbulletin,PHP forum For making Forum system

some scripts are free (like wordpress , joomla ,….) , others need payments (like vbulletin which costs about 170$,…)

Hint: some hosting companies (like the mentioned companies )provide one click installation for the Famous scripts

all the above collection are for special website building , there is also some free internet services that provide you with the website building tools (including free domain, hosting , and interface script ) like blogger.com , wordpress.com , …..

from the above options i prefer to select a hosting company (Ex: CertifiedHosting) and get the domain from other domain service like (Ex: godaddy.com) and link the hosting with the domain Name Server (DNS) – will be demonstrate in the next article ), and setup your prefered script on this hosting  - i prefer this method Because:

1- easly backup your website (important to save your work )

2- higher security (as the Aphorism says: Don’t put all eggs in one basket )
3- full control panel of the domain name and hosting each in separate condition (highly recommended )
3- can setup any no. of websites under the main domain as (subdomain)
4- making an official mail for your website as ([email protected])