Starting out a website involves a few main ingredients that you need, as well as many optional pieces. In this article, we will discuss the essentials you need to at least be viewable on the internet. Main components are having a domain name and web hosting for your files, the actual physical files like HTML, that make up the design of the page and the option to secure your content against non encrypted attacks. Let’s get further into each.

Domains Name Registration

When starting up your website, you need a domain name to help people remember how to get to your site. A memorable domain name is something like google.com, which everyone knows. When starting out, you may want to look into some companies offering you to purchase cheap domain names to start your web business. These companies almost always provide similar features to the big companies and are a great alternative.

Web Hosting

Your web site files need to be stored online for people to get them. If you have an image, a PDF file or flash presentation, for others to see it, there has to be a location always ready to show those files. This is where an affordable web hosting solution comes into play. At a price of five dollars or less a month, you can normally get an inexpensive hosting solution that will host your sites files.

Web Page Design

Your web site will be designed with a variety of HTML files, Images, Videos, Flash and PDF files. A web developer can create this for you or you will do it yourself. The site will look better if a person with the better skills is creating it. You can use tools like Dreamweaver or other web hosting sitebuilders to create your site. Again, the tools used will be directly related to quality.

Secured Hosting Service (Optional)

Having your hosting secured is an optional practice for most sites as there is usually just static data. For those sites, that are collecting more precious information, especially credit card data, will want to buy ssl certificate to protect their users data. The data is protected by a web server certificate that changes your site from http to https, indicating to the user it is secure. The transformation to an https site is what makes the site use the certificate to encrypt the transmitted data, so it is kept away from prying eyes. It is a necessity for these sites, but not for regular sites.

Those are four basics you need to start any web site and will get you started. You then need to decide what additional components you may need to also include in your web site package.