Hosted Sites
| Web Site or Domain Hosting |
If you don't want to go the expense of registering your own domain, you can normally set up your web site as part of your Internet Service Provider's (ISP) package. Normally when you sign up with Optus or BigPond for your monthly internet access, they also allow you a small web hosting facility as part of the package. The first problem with this is, your web site address will look something like:
http://www.optusnet.com.au/~mybeautwebsite, the second problem is that when you decide to take up a special internet access offer from say AAPT, you have to change your web address (and all your stationery) to 'http://www.aapt.net.au/~mybeautwebsite' what's more your email address changes from 'mybeautwebsite@optusnet.com.au' to 'mybeautwebsite@aapt.net.au'.. a real pain! But, it is included in your ISP charge so in effect costs nothing ... you get what you pay for.
If you have your own domain, it doesn't have to be hosted by your ISP. It is normally hosted by specialist domain hosting service - such as KeyChange. Under this situation, your web address can be as simple as http://mybeautwebsite.com and your email can be yourrealname@mybeautwebsite.com no matter how many times you change your ISP your domain and email address remain the same. Domain hosting costs vary depending on your needs;
- space ie: how many web pages and other components. A small host package would be 20 megabytes
- secure access (SSL) facilities for such things as credit card information
- e-commerce facilities such as shopping carts
- traffic, your site may be small but very popular
- types of design and update access eg: Blogs
- database services ie: SQL or active server pages
- streaming audio or video
- chat facilities, forums etc
