If you are new to this whole website business, it can get a bit confusing, especially if you are astute enough to be shopping around and hearing all sorts of different jargon, with different opinions from different companies, much of which can be highly contradictory.

The aim of this article is to clarify the basics so that you can have the essential knowledge to make an informed decision, no matter which company you eventually decide to host with. The most important thing that you will ever do is get informed because, as with any industry, this one also has its sharks - those hard-sell individuals who are dying to get their hands on someone who doesn't know any better.

What do you need in order to have a website?
You are essentially going to need 3 things that you simply cannot avoid. These are however the only 3 things that you absolutely have to have:

a) A domain name - this is your online business name and has to be registered to you each year. This is the very first thing that you should do - get your name registered befoe someone else takes it. You do not need to ahve a registered business (like a cc) in order to register your domain name.

Domain names are controlled by registrars, much like company names are controlled by the registrar of companies. Some registrars dictate that a domain has to be registered for more than one year at a time, but for most, you can register for one year only. If you fail to renew this registration after each year, it will lapse and the domain will be available for anyone else to register. It is therefore possible to lose your domain name.

Your domain name is your online identity, which means it is critical that you are the registered owner (registrant) and that you retain ownership for as long as you continue to trade.

Make sure that whoever registers your domain name for you states very clearly that you will be the registered owner and not them. Companies that offer free domains very often register the domain in their own name and this is how they tie you in to hosting with them. Although they do not ask you to sign a hosting contract, the fact that they own your domain name means it could be impossible for you to move this domain to another host in the future.

b) A website - often referred to as a "web page", this is what people actually see online when they go to your domain, eg:  if you go to www.webinn.co.za you will see the website on which you are currently reading this.  Your website can be a single page or many thousands of pages. It all depends on how much information you have and what sor of layout you want. There are many different ways to create a website and this goes beyond the scope of this article. It is however worth reading more about because it is an area in which people are ripped off daily. 

At the end of this article, there are links to other articles that can assist you further.

c) Hosting - this is where your website will be kept and made available to everyone in the world for them all to see it. Think of it as the space you are renting for your business, much like you would rent office space. Without it you have no address and will never be found by anyone.

The most important thing for you to know is that not all hosting companies are equal. Some are professional, some are rip-offs and some are running a server out of their bedroom. Cheapest is seldom best when it comes to hosting, but by the same token, most expensive does not mean better service or facilities.  More information is available on this in our article on choosing a hosting company. It's worth a few minutes of reading time.

The above is it in a nutshell. With these 3 elements in place, you have a website that can be visited by anyone in the world who has an internet connection.

We hope that this has provided some clarity to get you started.

Further reading:

Website development articles and tutorials (our sister website)
Web site hosting articles
Glossary of internet terminology and jargon (our sister website)