What is Internet?

The Internet is essentially a global network of computing resources. You can think about the
Internet as a physical collection of routers and circuits as a set of shared resources or even as an
attitude about interconnecting and intercommunication. Some common definitions given in the
past include:

A network of networks based on the TCP/IP communications protocol.

A community of people who use and develop those networks.
A community of people who use and develop those networks.

Internet Based Services:

Some of the basic services available to Internet users are:

Email: A fast, easy, and inexpensive way to communicate with other Internet users
around the world.
Telnet: Allows a user to log into a remote computer as though it were a local system.
FTP: Allows a user to transfer virtually every kind of file that can be stored on a
computer from one Internet-connected computer to another.
Usenetnews: A distributed bulletin board that offers a combination news and discussion
service on thousands of topics.
World Wide Web (WWW): A hypertext interface to Internet information resources.

What is WWW?
This stands for World Wide Web. A technical definition of the World Wide Web is : all the
resources and users on the Internet that are using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
A broader definition comes from the organization that Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee helped
found, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):
The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of
human knowledge.
In simple terms, The World Wide Web is a way of exchanging information between computers
on the Internet, tying them together into a vast collection of interactive multimedia resources.

What is HTTP?
This stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is the protocol being used to transfer
hypertext documents thats makes the World World Wide possible.

A standard web address such as http://www.yahoo.com/ is called a URL and here the prefix http
indicates its protocol

What is URL?
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and is used to specify addresses on the World Wide
Web. A URL is the fundamental network identification for any resource connected to the web
(e.g., hypertext pages, images, and sound files).
A URL will have the following format:
protocol://hostname/other_information
The protocol specifies how information from the link is transferred. The protocol used for web
resources is HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Other protocols compatible with most web
browsers include FTP, telnet, newsgroups, and Gopher.
The protocol is followed by a colon, two slashes, and then the domain name. The domain name
is the computer on which the resource is located.
Links to particular files or subdirectories may be further specified after the domain name. The
directory names are separated by single forward slashes.

What is Website?
Currently you are on our website http://www.tutorialspoint.com which is a collection of various
pages written in HTML markup language. This is a location on the web where people can find
tutorials on latest technologies. Similar way there are millions of websites available on the web.
Each page available on the Website is called a web page and first page of any web site is called
home page for that site.

What is Web Server?

Every Web site sits on a computer known as a Web server. This server is always connected to
the internet. Every Web server that is connected to the Internet is given a unique address made
up of a series of four numbers between 0 and 256 separated by periods.for example,
68.178.157.132 ro 68.122.35.127.
When you register a Web address, also known as a domain name, such as tutorialspoint.com you
have to specify the IP address of the Web server that will host the site.
We will see different type of Web servers in a separate chapter.

What is Web Browser?

Web Browsers are software installed on your PC. To access the Web you need a web browsers,
such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.
Currently you must be using any sort of Web browser while you are naviating through my site
tutorialspoint.com. On the Web, when you navigate through pages of information this is
commonly known as browsing or surfing.
We will see different type of Web browsers in a separate chapter.

What is SMTP Server?

This stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Server. This server takes care of delivering emails
from one server to another server. When you send an email to an email address, it is delivered to
its recipient by a SMTP Server.

What is ISP?
This stands for Internet Service Provider. They are the companies who provide you service in
terms of internet connection to connect to the internet.
You will buy space on a Web Server from any Internet Service Provider. This space will be used
to host your Web site.

What is HTML?
This stands for HyperText Markup Language. This is the language in which we write web pages
for any Website. Even the page you are reading right now is written in HTML.
This is a subset of Standard Generalized Mark-Up Language (SGML) for electronic publishing,
the specific standard used for the World Wide Web.

What is Hyperlink?
A hyperlink or simply a link is a selectable element in an electronic document that serves as an
access point to other electronic resources. Typically, you click the hyperlink to access the linked
resource. Familiar hyperlinks include buttons, icons, image maps, and clickable text links.

What is DNS ?
DNS stands for Domain Name System. When someone types in your domain name,
www.example.com, your browser will ask the Domain Name System to find the IP that hosts

your site. When you register your domain name, your IP address should be put in a DNS along
with your domain name. Without doing it your domain name will not be functioning properly.

What is W3C?
This stands for World Wide Web Consortium which is an international consortium of companies
involved with the Internet and the Web.
The W3C was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the original architect of the World Wide
Web. The organization's purpose is to develop open standards so that the Web evolves in a single
direction rather than being splintered among competing factions. The W3C is the chief standards
body for HTTP and HTML.

Web - How it Works ?

On the simplest level, the Web physically consists of following components:

Your personal computer - This is the PC at which you sit to see the web.
A Web browser - A software installed on your PC which helps you to browse the Web.
An internet connection - This is provided by an ISP and connects you to the internet to
reach to any Web site.
A Web server - This is the computer on which a web site is hosted.
Routers & Switches - They are the combination of software and hardware who take your
request and pass to appropriate Web server.

The Web is known as a client-server system. Your computer is the client and the remote
computers that store electronic files are the servers.

Here's how web works:

When you enter something like http://www.google.com, the request goes to one of many special
computers on the Internet known as Domain Name Servers (DNS). All these requests are routed
through various routers and switches. The domain name servers keep tables of machine names
and their IP addresses, so when you type in http://www.google.com, it gets translated into a
number, which identifies the computers that serve the Google Web site to you.
When you want to view any page on the Web, you must initiate the activity by requesting a page
using your browser. The browser asks a domain name server to translate the domain name you
requested into an IP address. The browser then sends a request to that server for the page you
want, using a standard called Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP.
The server should constantly be connected to the Internet.ready to serve pages to visitors. When
it receives a request, it looks for the requested document and returns it to the Web browser.
When a request is made, the server usually logs the client's IP address, the document requested,
and the date and time it was requested. This information varies server to server.

An average Web page actually requires the Web browser to request more than one file from the
Web server and not just the HTML / XHTML page, but also any images, style sheets, and other
resources used in the web page. Each of these files including the main page needs a URL to
identify each item. Then each item is sent by the Web server to the Web browser and Web
browser collects all this information and displays them in the form of Web page.

Web - Browser Types

Web Browsers are software installed on your PC. To access the Web you need a web browsers,
such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.
Currently you must be using any sort of Web browser while you are navigating through my site
tutorialspoint.com. On the Web, when you navigate through pages of information this is
commonly known as web browsing or web surfing.
There are four leading web browsers: Explorer, FireFox, Netscape and Safari but there are many
others browsers available.You might be interested in knowing Complete Browser Statistics. Now
we will see these browsers in bit more detail.
While developing a site, we should try to make it compatible to as many browsers as possible.
Specially site should be compatible to major browsers like Explorer, FireFox, Netscape, Opera
and Safari.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (IE) is a product from software giant Microsoft. This is the most
commonly used browser in the universe. This was introduced in 1995 along with
Windows 95 launch and it has passed Netscape popularity in 1998.
You can download latest version of this browser from Miscrosoft site Download Internet
Explorer
Netscape
Netscape is one of the original Web browsers. This is what Microsoft designed Internet
Explorer to compete against. Netscape and IE comprise the major portion of the browser
market. Netscape was introduced in 1994.
You can download latest copy of this browser from Download Netscape
Mozilla
Mozilla is an open-source Web browser, designed for standards compliance,
performance and portability. The development and testing of the browser is coordinated
by providing discussion forums, software engineering tools, releases and bug tracking.

Browsers based on Mozilla code is the second largest browser family on the Internet
today, representing about 30% of the Internet community.
You can download latest copy of this browser from Download Mozilla
Konqueror
Konqueror is an Open Source web browser with HTML 4.01 compliance, supporting
Java applets, JavaScript, CSS 1, CSS 2.1, as well as Netscape plugins. This works as a
file manager as wellIt supports basic file management on local UNIX filesystems, from
simple cut/copy and paste operations to advanced remote and local network file
browsing.
You can download latest copy of this browser from Download Konqueror
Firefox
Firefox is a new browser derived from Mozilla. It was released in 2004 and has grown to
be the second most popular browser on the Internet.
You can download a latest version of this browser from Download Firefox
Safari
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included in Mac OS X. It was first
released as a public beta in January 2003. Safari has very good support for latest
technologies like XHTML, CSS2 etc.
You can download a latest version of this browser from Download Safari
Opera
Opera is smaller and faster than most other browsers, yet it is full- featured. Fast, userfriendly, with keyboard interface, multiple windows, zoom functions, and more. Java
and non Java-enabled versions available. Ideal for newcomers to the Internet, school
children, handicap and as a front-end for CD-Rom and kiosks.
You can download a latest version of this browser from Download Opera
Lynx
Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web browser for users on Unix, VMS, and other
platforms running cursor-addressable, character-cell terminals or emulators.

You can download a latest version of this browser from Download Lynx

Web - Server Types

Every Web site sits on a computer known as a Web server. This server is always connected to
the internet. Every Web server that is connected to the Internet is given a unique address made
up of a series of four numbers between 0 and 255 separated by periods.for example,
68.178.157.132 or 68.122.35.127.
When you register a Web address, also known as a domain name, such as tutorialspoint.com you
have to specify the IP address of the Web server that will host the site. You can load up with
Dedicated Servers that can support your web-based operations.
There are four leading web browsers: Apache, IIS, lighttpd and Jagsaw. Now we will see these
servers in bit more detail.
Apart from these Web Servers, there are other Web Servers also available in the market but they
are very expansive. Major ones are Netscape's iPlanet, Bea's Web Logic and IBM's Websphere.
Apache HTTP Server
This is the most popular web server in the world developed by the Apache Software
Foundation. Apache web server is an open source software and can be installed on
almost all operating systems including Linux, Unix, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS X
and more. About 60% of the web server machines run the Apache Web Server.
You can have Apache with tomcat module to have JSP and J2EE related support.
You can have detailed information about this server at Apache HTTP Server
Internet Information Services
The Internet Information Server (IIS) is a high performance Web Server from
Microsoft. This web server runs on Windows NT/2000 and 2003 platforms ( and may
be on upcoming new Windows version also). IIS comes bundled with Windows
NT/2000 and 2003; Because IIS is tightly integrated with the operating system so it is
relatively easy to administer it.
You can have detailed information about this server at Miscrosoft IIS
lighttpd
The lighttpd, pronounced lighty is also a free web server that is distributed with the
FreeBSD operating system. This open source web server is fast, secure and consumes

much less CPU power. Lighttpd can also run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and
Solaris operating systems.
You can have detailed information about this server at lighttpd
Sun Java System Web Server
This web server from Sun Microsystems is suited for medium and large web sites.
Though the server is free it is not open source. It however, runs on Windows, Linux and
Unix platforms. The Sun Java System web server supports various languages, scripts
and technologies required for Web 2.0 such as JSP, Java Servlets, PHP, Perl, Python,
Ruby on Rails, ASP and Coldfusion etc.
You can have detailed information about this server at Sun Java System Web Server
Jigsaw Server
Jigsaw (W3C's Server) comes from the World Wide Web Consortium. It is open
source and free and can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac OS
X Free BSD etc. Jigsaw has been written in Java and can run CGI scripts and PHP
programs.
You can have detailed information about this server at Jigsaw Server

Web - Skills Required

If you are planning to maintain a Web site then I'm listing few basic skills which you will require
to build and maintain a Web site. This list may go to infinite because today there are numerous
technologies available and many are coming everyday. So you have to plan and affirm on any
one of the available technologies and go ahead for your project.
This is not required that you should have knowledge of all the listed skills. If you want to
develop a simple Web site then you would needs just first four skills listed here. Rest of the skills
are required if you want to go for a bigger and more interactive Web site.

Computer Operations: All you need to know is how to operate a computer - Windows,
Linux or Macintosh. This depends on which Web Server you want to host your web site.
So you should have basic knowledge of that system only. You should be well acquainted
of basic operations like creating file, deleting file, updating file, directory creation, file
permission etc.
Remote Access: Most of the times your Web Server will be accessed from remote site
only. You should be well aware how to connect a computer from remote site. So at least
you should have basic knowledge of telnet utility to connect to a remote machine. There
are many service providers who will provide you control panel to manage your Web site.

File Uploading & Downloading: As I told you most of the times your Web Server will
be on remote site. So you would need to upload and download all the files related to your
Web site. So at least you should have basic knowledge of FTP utility to connect to a
remote machine and download or upload your files. Almost service providers give you
facility to upload your files on your Web server.
HTML / XHTML Knowledge: These are the markup languages which you will use to
build your web site. So you should have good understanding on these languages. You can
refer our tutorial to learn HTML / XHTML.
CSS Knowledge: Cascading Style Sheet knowledge is required to achieve many results
which are not possible through HTML or XHTML.
PHP Script: Now a days many sites are being developed using PHP language. This
script helps you to create an interactive Web site. You can refer our tutorial to learn PHP
Script.
PERL Script: PERL is another language which is being highly used to develop
interactive Web Applications. So if you are planning to use PERL to develop your Web
site then you can refer our tutorial to learn PERL Script.
Java or VB Scripts: These scripts are required to perform user level validations and to
add more interactivity in your Web site. So a web developer is desired to have knowledge
of any of the client side scripts.
AJAX Technology: This is the latest technology in the web. Google and Yahoo are
using this technology to give a better browsing experience to their site visitors. You can
refer our tutorial to learn AJAX Technology.
ASP or JSP : These are another technologies to be used to develop interactive Web sites.
Flash Knowledge: You can plan to use Macromedia Flash to build your Web site. This is
a bit time consuming to learn this technology but once you learnt then you can develop
very beautiful and attractive web sites using Flash.
HTTP Protocol: As you grow you are desired to have more knowledge about Web. So I
would suggest you to go through the web backbone i.e. HTTP protocol as well. You can
refer our tutorial to learn HTTP Protocol.

Web - Tools Required

I hope you are already connected to the Internet, so you already met basic requirement which is
an Internet Connection and a Computer. Now a days you will get broadband Internet
connectivity on very nominal prices.
Here we will list out various other tools which you may need to develop your Web Site.

Computer Machine : If you do not have computer available and you received this
tutorial printed on a paper then I would say that first of all you would need a computer
machine running either Windows or Linux or Unix or Macintosh system or any other
operating system.
Internet Connection: If you are not connected to the internet and you received this
tutorial printed on a paper then I would say that this is second and another most important
tool would need to connect to the Internet and to you Web Server where you will host

your web site. For this purpose you can buy either a dial up connection or broadband
connection of high speed connectivity based on your requirement and budget.
A Web Server : Apart from basic Internet connectivity you will need one Web Server to
keep your all the files related to your Web sit. So you would need to buy space on a Web
Server. There are millions of ISPs who are in business of selling web space at
competitive prices. We will give more detail on this in Web Hosting Concepts chapter.
A Text Editor: This is another most important tool which you will need to develop your
Web site. If you are using Windows then you can use notepad as a text editor, or if you
are using Linux/Unix then vi editor is one of my favorite editors. You will need this
editor to write your HTML, PHP or ASP pages or for any other editing purpose. For
practice purpose your can use our Online HTML Editor.
A Web Browser: You will need this tool to see the result of your HTML file. So you
should have either Internet Explorer or Firefox etc. installed on your computer.
Web Authoring Tools: If you don't want to use a simple Text Editor to edit your HTML
files then there are many commercial Web Authoring Tools available. These tools are
also called HTML editors. Microsoft's Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver are both
a visual HTML (WYSIWYG) and HTML source code editor. These editors helps you to
develop your HTML pages vary rapidly.
Secure telnet client: If you are connecting to your Web server directly then you can use
a tool called PuTTY. This is what I'm using while connecting to my web server.
Secure FTP client: If you are connecting to your Web server directly using FTP client to
upload or download your web files then you can use a tool called PSFTP. FTP stands for
File Transfer Protocol. Simply put, after you design your web site, you need to send it to
the Web and your FTP program will do just that for you. This is what I'm using while
connecting to my web server.

Web - Domain Names

A domain name is the part of your Internet address that comes after "www". For example, in
www.tutorialspoint.com the domain name is tutorialspoint.com.
A domain name becomes your Business Address so care should be taken to select a domain
name. Your domain name should be easy to remember and easy to type.

How to get a domain name ?

When you plan to put a site online, this is one of the important steps to buy a domain name. This
is always not necessary that whatever domain name you are looking that is available so in that
case you will have to opt for any other good domain name.
When you buy a domain name it is registered and when domain names are registered they are
added to a large domain name register, and information about your site - including your Internet
IP address is stored on a DNS server and your contact information etc is registered with your
registrar.

You can buy domain name from any domain registrar like GoDaddy.com etc.

Domain Extension Types:

There are many different types of domain extensions you can choose for your domain name. This
depends on your business nature. If you are going to register a domain name for educational site
purpose then you can go for .edu extension. Below is a reference of the correct usage of certain
extensions. But there is no hard and fast rule to go for any extension. Most commonly used
is .com

.com - Stands for company/commercial, but it can be used for any web site.
.net - Stands for network and is usually used for a network of sites.
.org - Stands for organization and is supposed to be for non-profit bodies.
.us, .in - They are based on your country names so that you can go for country specific
domain extensions.
.biz - A newer extension on the Internet and can be used to indicate that this site is purely
related to business.
.info - Stands for information. This domain name extension can be very useful, and as a
new comer it's doing well.
.tv - Stands for Television and are more appropriate for TV channel sites.

Newer domain extensions such as .biz .info and .us etc. have more name choices available as
many of the popular domains have yet to be taken and most of the them are available at very
nominal prices.

Choosing Domain Name:

This is very important step to name your web site. As I have told you that your domain name will
be your business address so very much care should be taken while choosing a domain name.
Many people think it is important to have keywords in a domain. Keywords in the domain name
are usually important, but it usually can be done while keeping the domain name short,
memorable, and free of hyphens.
Using keywords in your domain name give you a strong competitive advantage over your
competitors. Having your keywords in your domain name can increase click through rates on
search engine listings and paid ads as well as make it easier to Using your keywords in get
keyword rich descriptive inbound links.
Avoid buying long, and confusing domain names. May people separate the words in their
domain names using dashes or hyphen. In the past the domain name itself was a significant
ranking factor but now search engines have advanced it is not very significant factor anymore.

Keep two to three words in your domain name it will be more memorable. Some of the most
memorable web sites do a great job of branding by creating their own word. Few examples are
eBay, Yahoo!, Expedia, Slashdot, Fark, Wikipedia, Google...
You should be able to say it over the telephone once and the other person should know how to
spell it and they should know what you sell. If you can do that AND work keywords in there,
good for you. If you can't, skip the keywords.

What are Sub Domains:

You can divide your domain into many sub domains based on your requirement. If you are doing
multiple business using the same domain then its worth to use sub domain for every business.
Following are examples of sub domains
You must have seen http://www.google.com as a main domain but google has created many
subdomains based on their business. Few of them are as follows:

http://adwords.google.com - This sub domain is being used for Google Adwords.

http://groups.google.com - This sub domain is being used for Google Groups.
http://images.google.com - This sub domain is being used for Google Images.

This way you can present your different business sections in a very good segregated way. This is
not a big thing to create a sub domain. If you already have registered a domain your registrar will
provide you a way to create your sub domains. You may need to talk to your registrar for more
detail.

Web - Hosting Concepts

Web hosting means to put your web site content on a Web server. Hosting your web site on your
own server could be an option. But this will become very much expansive unless you are hosting
a site like yahoo.com or google.com. So this tutorials does not cover how to set up your own
hosting server.
Buying a server space or renting a complete server from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) are
most widely used options. This section guides you to choose a hosting type and makes you aware
of other related concepts.

Hosting Platforms:
You can go for any of the following two most widely used hosting platforms:

Windows Hosting Servers : If you are a Windows lover then you will find many hosting
servers running different flavors of Windows and you can buy space from these servers.
Normally Windows hosting server are more expansive because of lot of software
incensing costs are involved with these servers

Linux Hosting Servers: If you want to go for Linux then opportunities are unlimited and
they will have to pay less then what you will pay for Windows Hosting Server. There are
many ISP who provides Hosting Servers with different flavors of Unix.

Hosting Types:
There are many options available and you can select any hosting type based on your requirement
and budget. Following are most widely used hosting types:

Free Hosting: Yes, this is true there are many service providers who will give you free
space on their web server with a condition that you will allow them to run their
advertisement at your web pages. So if you are OK with this option then you have
nothing to pay for a space. There are some web sites like geocities.com, lycos.com,
myspace.com etc. who give you space to build your web pages.
Shared Hosting: With shared hosting, your web site is hosted on a powerful server along
with other web sites. On a shared host you will have your own user ID and password to
login to the shared host and you will be allowed to work in your work area. You would
not be able to touch any file or directory belonging to other host partner. Even you would
not know how many sites are hosted on your shared host. This type of hosting is very cost
effective and good for small web site where your space and speed are not very important.
Here traffic on one site will affect the speed of all other hosted sites.
Virtual Dedicated Hosting: This type of hosting is better for medium size business.
With virtual dedicated hosting you will have a dedicated bandwidth and dedicated RAM
for your site. You will be given root ID and password to maintain your Web server. You
will be complete owner of your virtual dedicated server and will be able to install or deinstall any software. This type of hosting is created on a single server but it is managed in
such a way that every user will have dedicated speed and bandwidth. This is bit more
expansive but really good one for medium size business.
Dedicated Hosting: This type of hosting is very similar to virtual dedicated hosting but
here complete machine will be allotted for you. They are more expansive than virtual
dedicated hosting and should be considered when you have a very high traffic
requirement.
Collocated Hosting: This is very difficult to set you dedicated resources like highsecurity against fire and vandalism, regulated backup power, dedicated Internet
connections and more. So collocation is the option which allows you to put your machine
in a service provider's premises to avail all the available facilities. This is also a very
expansive option and should be opted when you have very high traffic requirement.

Hosting Components :
When you buy a Web server space then you should be clear about the follows. You should do
price comparison between different service providers based on the following components:

Disc Space: A small or medium web site will need between 10 and 100MB of disk space.
If you plan to keep lot of audio and Video on your web site then you need plan to buy

more space. Before buying server space you should check the options available to expand
your disc space if you need it in future.
Monthly Traffic: A small or medium web site will need between 1GB and 10GB of data
transfer on monthly basis. If you plan to keep lot of audio and Video on your web site
then you need plan to look for more data transfer capacity. Check different options based
on your requirements. What are other options available in case you cross the given data
transfer limit. Your site should not be stopped in case you reach to the given limit.
Processing Speed: If you are buying space on a shared machine then you can not guess
how much speed will be given to you. In that case only way is to see other hosted sites
with the same service provider to know about their hosting quality. But if you are buying
virtual dedicated server or dedicated server then you should consider how much RAM is
being allocated to you. Your pricing will depend on the given processing power to you.
Connection Speed: Now a days very fast connection speed is available from most of the
service providers. So choose a service provider who is giving better connection speed in
terms of bits per second. You can have connection speed ranging from 64Kb per second
to 2.488Gb per second.
Email Accounts: Make sure you are going to get sufficient number of e-mail accounts.
There are many other options available which come along with your e-mail account. Like,
will you get IMAP, POP and E-mail Forwarding options available along with your e-mail
facilities.
Emailing Support: Apart form having email accounts it is also very important that your
web server should have a facility to send emails from back-end. In case your site visitors
want to contact to you using a form provided by you then you will be able to use that
emailing facility to send email to your designated account. In simple terms you should
make sure that SMTP Server is setup and working on your Web server.
Latest Technologies: You should make sure that your web server is equipped with all
the latest technologies. It should have latest version support for PHP, PERL, ASP and
JAVA etc.
Databases: There are many databases available MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server etc. So you
should choose your server based on your database requirement. If you are buying space
on a shared server then you need to verify how much space will be allocated for your
database. Many ISP does not give more than a limited space for databases. So if your site
needs lot of database size then you should go for virtual dedicated server.
Server Uptime: This is very important to buy a web server from a reliable and reputed
ISP. You should make sure your ISP is giving you 99.99% server uptime. If there is
server down then there are many service providers who gives you compensation in case
your sites goes down more than a limited time.
Backup & FTP: Make sure your Service Provider is giving you or more ways of taking
regular backup of your web site. If your site is changing everyday then it becomes very
important that you should take regular backup of your web site. Many service providers
do it on your behalf but they charge very little cost for this service.
Control Panel: Just make sure what type of facilities you will get to maintain your
hosting account. If your service provider is providing your an easy to use control panel or
some other similar tool. Using a control panel you should be able to maintain basic
operations related to your web site specially like log your service request, your reboot
request or any other problem.

Customer Support: Before finalizing a deal with your service provider you should make
sure they will provide your required support. You can get this information using Internet
forums or from your friends. There are many service providers who give you 24x7
support for any technical or non technical problem.

Web - Ecommerce Hosting

Ecommerce is a way of doing business through Internet. Specially when you are selling your
product or services through Internet then you are doing ecommerce.
So if you planning to put a web site which will have transactions likes buying or selling items or
services then it means you are going to setup an ecommerce web site. If this is the case then I
don't think this guide will help you upto a level where should be able to setup an ecommerce site
because there are many more things which should be considered while setting up an ecommerce
web site.
Still you can start from here : E-commerce hosting are bit expansive but they should not be
treated as expansive that you can not start an ecommerce web site. Now a days it is very easy to
set up an ecommerce site only thing is that just get in touch of any good service provider and
start gathering basic information.
There many service providers who help you to setup your virtual store and charge you
unexpectedly very low. Even now google also has started google account service in which you
can sell your products through them and all the money will come in your account without any
hassle.
While finalizing your ecommerce hosting setup, to avoid any future risk you should be very clear
on how to handle the followings:

Customer Registrations
Customer Transactions
Product Catalogs
Customer Orders
Order Security
Server Security
Server Maintenance
Server Backup
Server downtime
Inventory Control
Shipment Methods
Payment Methods
Foreign currency
Credit Cards
Taxes issues

You should take this list and discuss it with your service provider as well to understand how they
will support you to handle all these items.

Web - Site Backup

Your server's hard drive crashed. Your site is hacked and hacker was kind enough who deleted
all your files. Your web host disappeared with your money and your data. Even worst case there
was earth quack and your ISP building is gone down and everything is lost.
Touch Wood!!! Nobody should face such a situation. But if you are not prepared for these
situations, your hard work might be lost forever. That is why it is of the utmost importance that
you keep regular backups of your data.
Now there are many questions :

How frequently backup should be taken?

Where this backup should be preserved?
What type of backup should be taken ?
Who should take these backup ?

Now let us answer these questions one by one:

How frequently backup should be taken?

If your site is not changing over a period of time then I will say take backup only once and keep
it on your floppy or hard disc or data disc or DVD wherever you like. In case you need to restore
it, just do it and see your web site up and running.
But if your site is changing over the period of time then it becomes very important to take regular
backup. Web sites like amazon.com have very tight backup schedules and very expansive
backup infrasturcture.
So it depends on your business and you have to see how much data loss you can bear. If you
think it is not affordable to loss even a single day data then I would recommend to schedule daily
backup and similarly you can decide if weekly or monthly backup are OK for you or not.

Where this backup should be preserved?

Most of the times backup is taken from one machine and put on different other machines or
media. So if possible you should arrange a different backup server where you can FTP your
complete data to be backup up. If this is not too much then you can keep it in floppy or data CD
or DVD etc.
If possible, I would recommend to keep multiple copy of backup but with a very managed way to
avoid any confusion. You should have a proper version control over the different backup.

There are many service providers who provide you different backup server with a very nominal
cost and its worth to spend that amount on backup services.

What type of backup should be taken ?

There are two types of backup: incremental and full. This depends on what type of backup tools
you are using. There are many backup tools like oracle provides their utilities to take different
type of backup.

Incremental Backup - The backups controller compares the existing backup to the data
that you wish to backup. If it is an exact match between the two, then no additional files
will be backed up. However, if you have added or edited any file, these files will be
updated in the backup, thus the incremental name.
Full Backup - Here all files are written to the backup, even if they already exist in the
most current backup.

Who should take these backup ?

Simplest case is that you can login to your web server on monthly or weekly basis and copy all
the web site related files on different computer or media. But this goes well if your site is having
small amount of data.
If you have huge database and numerous files then it is difficult to manage such backups on
everyday and weekly basis. So in that case you may need to have automated scripts to take this
backup and to keep them at another machine or media etc.
You can write your shell script or perl script and go into different directories and collect all the
files and zip them automatically, assign then a unique backup number and then ftp those files on
a designated backup server or media like tap drive etc.

Web - Site Statistics

Your site is up and running. But this is very important for you to know who is coming on your
site and what they using. There are following components which should be available to you.

Who is visitor ? You should have your site visitor IP address available with you to know
the geographical location and identity of that visitor.
Visitors Timestamp: This is important to know what time most of the visitors are
visiting your site so in case if you plan a server down then you can decide it very easily.
Second timestamp and IP address will help you to identify your site visitor in case an
investigation is required against a site visitor.
What visitor is using ? What pages did the site visitor view on your web site will give
you an idea about the importance of various sections of your web site.

How visitors came ? This is another important information you should be aware of. How
you are getting your site visitors. Are they coming directly or coming through some other
web site or advertising program
How long stay ? - How long a site visitor is staying at your site. This is important for you
to know this duration if visitors are leaving your site just after browsing 1 or 2 pages then
you should think some way to retain them for long time on your site.
Visitors Browser : This information is important to improve your web site for that type
of web browsers.

Statistics Programs:
There are many web sites who help you to find out all these information. You just need to keep a
small piece of code in the <head>....</head> section of your web pages and you will have not
only all the above mentioned information but also a complete analysis of your site.

You can try Googles Analytics Program to capture your web site statistics.
Another good program is Webalizer. This is will give you all the basic site statistics you
need.
There is a site from sourceforge which gives you opportunity to collect your web site
statistics. So you can try it as well AWStats.

Site Statistics Terminology:

There is a very basic terminology related to your web site statistics. Go through the following
terms to become more comfortable with your site statistics report and analysis.

Unique Visits - The number of unique visitors you had for the given time period.
Example: if there was only a single person who visited your web site, and visited 1,000
separate times in a day, the unique visits would just be one. The uniqueness is counted
based on the IP address of the visitor.
Total Visits - The total number of visits including duplicate visits, that a web site
receives in a given time period. Each time a site visitor reaches to your site it is counted
one visit.
Page Views or Page Impressions - Each time a web page is loaded it is referred to as a
page view. If you are counting a web site link available on this page then it will be
counted as a page impression.
Hits - This is very similar to page views and will be counted every time a visitor will
click any link related to your web site.
Direct Access : - This amount refers to the people who accessed your web site through
their bookmarks or typed in your URL manually in the URL box of the browser.
Referrer & Referral URL - The web address where the visitor followed a link to reach
your web site. For example if someone finds your web site in google search and click
over the link then google will be referrer.

Web - Site Popularity

You design a web site and developed it and finally hosted it. Now just think how many site
visitors know about this site address and related service.
So if you want to make your site a success then actual work starts after hosting your web site
successfully. This includes following actions but to gain popularity is not limited to these actions.

Search Engine Inclusion: First step, you should go and include your web site in various
search engines like google, yahoo and msn etc. Never trust on automated software to
include your site in search engines. There are many fraud companies in this business so
be away from them and don't waste your money.
Open directory inclusion: This is another way to make your site popular. There are
many open directory projects like dmoz.com and yahoo.com etc where you can include
your web site to get attention from net surfers.
Google Adwords: This is paid program from google where you can register and you can
pay based on number of clicks on your web site link or based on number of page
impressions.
Advertising Programs: If you have big budget then you can go for higher resources like
TV ads or News paper or magazine adverting programs. They are most effective and
expansive as well.
White papers and Article: If you write white papers or articles then you can include
your web site link in those white papers or articles to get more traffic on your site.
Site Link Exchange: There are many sites including my site, who do site link exchange.
So you will keep their site link at your web site and they will keep your site link at their
site. This is for then mutual benefit of site link exchangers.

Web - Free Graphics

Let me first tell you that graphics is very important part of any web site. If you have time and
talent to design your web graphics then its great. This does not only require time and talent to
have web graphics but you need to spend some amount of money as well to buy good graphics
software like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop etc.
However if you are not blessed with an artist's hand and you don't have money as well to spend
on buying graphics software then Internet is the heaven and you should appreciate thousands of
graphics designers who have created free web graphics for you.
We also have listed tones of Free Graphics for you which you can use in your web site. You will
find it here Free Web Graphics.
Rest can be seen in the documentation with images.