Web Hosting
You will need a host for your site of course. While free
hosting sites are o.k. and I had www.geocities.com
for 5 years. However you will become frustrated with the lack
of data transfer (they shut your site down if too many people
look at it) although in my case this taught me how to streamline
my site, for example by saving the images for web to reduce their
file size and making my pages with a fairly light design, cutting
out gimmicks. They also plaster adverts all over your site and
it annoys me that they are making money out of the humble webmaster,
when it is the webmaster who should be making money (see my making
money online page) I now use www.nearlyfreespeech.net
for my hosting and once you have a paid for site the difference
is incredible.
Great web hosting:
Domain
Names
Oh how long did
I deny that a domain name would be usefull? I wish I had got one
sooner than I did. I used to write out the URL to my site for
friends: www.geocities.com/static1635
it always filled the note I was writing out. And then try telling
someone that URL over the phone! No, so much easier to say: www.greylizard.net.
It looks a lot neater and sorter written out aswell.
My site now uses this domain name for all it's URL's. You can have masked domains which hide the actual URL and make the address stick in the address bar which-ever page you goto. Many people neglect at add target_top or target_blank to their links, so you end up stuck in their URL frame where ever you go.
My domain name uses DNS (Domain Name Server) which is a much nicer way to do things and costs me about $7 a year. The upshot is that each page is added to the URL. So when you navigate to a page is appears at the end of the URL i.e. www.greylizard.net/webdesigntips.html. It just looks a lot better and helps with searchengines.