Setting Up a Web Page

Free Web Sites (Home Pages)

There are many companies that will give you free web space (~5meg) for your home page. Sometimes your ISP will also give you free web space. However, I suggest using a company other than your ISP so that switching ISP's is less complicated if you become dissatisfied with the service. The same holds true with your EMAIL address.

Some popular web sites that will give you free home pages can be found at http://geocities.yahoo.com/home/ (via yahoo), www.mailcity.com, www.netscape.com, www.lycos.com, and the list is almost endless. Usually you are given one directory for your HTML files and a directory called 'images' for your pictures, java .class files, etc...

Yahoo's GeoCities allows you to create subdirectories. Awesome place to have a free web site.

Most of these free sites also have WEB editors. My parents site www.deeperlifemin.com was constructed by one of these WEB editors. My mom, in her 60's, used a WEBTV unit (looks like a VCR) to set there site up. Her unit is hooked up to her TV unit. She doesn't like computers too much! Visit my parent's ministry's web site www.deeperlifemin.com

Who Is

http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois - information about or related to a domain name registration record.

Register for your own domain name (ex: www.michael-thomas.com)

Domain Name Registrar - you must choose a registrar to register your domain names. Usually they charge $35 a year (in 2001). You can purchase in 1 - 10 year increments. I've seen some charge $16 a year.

	www.register.com - I use this company. Great management tools and free services.
	www.godaddy.com - My brother uses this company. Very good rates.
	www.buydomains.com - Looks promising.
	www.networksolutions.com - Network Solutions - in year 2000 I did not like the services or process to used to change my information.

Services provided by Registrars:

Types of Services

Free unlimited email address forwarding at your domain
Free URL and frame forwarding
Prompt toll free technical and administrative support
Simple online control panel to manage all domain features and whois data
Free domain parking and DNS
Free "Under construction" or "Domain for sale" page

Terms

URL Forwarding - Some companies will register your name (URL) and give you a website "link" to another site.

	I use www.register.com because they have free URL Forwarding (free if you consider no charge but a register.com banner shows up on the bottom). For an example as of Sept 2000 I have www.thomasma.com & www.myfreetraining.com both using free URL forwarding to www.michael-thomas.com.
	I think register.com will do URL Forwarding with no banner for a $50 a year charge.

Organizations - The non-profit organization that is working with the government to manage domain names is ICANN http://www.icann.org.

Steps to setting up a Web Site with your own domain name.

	First, go to one of the Registrar sites above and choose a domain name that is available.
	Second, locate a "Web Hosting" company to host your site & setup an email account. They will get the Registrar to point to their server to allow web surfers to visit your site.

Get a Web Hosting Company

	http://www.hostme.com - $23.50 a month with great tech support service. Includes access to MSQL, PHP, JSP, FrontPage extensions, 350mb storage, POP3 and many other services. I use this service. I'm very satisfied.
	http://www.wantjava.com - specializes in hosting web sites that use Java (Servlets, JSP, databases, etc... (Tomcat, Oracle, Java) )
	www.freeservers.com - Free Web Hosting. 20mb free w/banners or other fee options without banners starting at ~ $6.95.
	www.interspeed.net - $9.95/$19.95 (www.yourname.com) - Saw a Email advertisment about this company. UNLIMITED Storage, Traffic, Email Aliases, Email Forwarding INSTANT ACCOUNT SIGNUP!, 15 POP3 Email Accounts Free Domain Name Registration Private FTP (to maintain your site 24 hours a day) Toll Free Support Daily Data Backup Public CGI-BIN (Counters, FormMail, and the Excite search engine) Private CGI-BIN (directory to run your own scripts) Free Detailed Graphical Site Statistics Microsoft FrontPage extensions ($20 setup fee)
	www.webprovider.com - Free Domain Based websites for allowing a banner page.

Other Resources