This is Part 1 in a 2 part series. Part 2 includes: Website Hosting, Storage and Bandwidth.
CHECKOUT PART 2 To someone who is building their first website, or who maybe has had little involvement in their first website, these words have little meaning.
It’s always good to have at least a little bit of knowledge in an area that you do business in, so here are some basics that everyone who has a website should know about them:
Domain Names: This is by far the most recognizable term. It’s the name of the URL you put into the address bar on your website such as:
Tnsinksdesigns.com
Google.com
Facebook.com
Domains are separated into categories such as ".com”, ".net”, “.gov.” etc. Recently, these options have exploded into any name you can think of (.business, .church, .dogs, etc). However, I would not recommend using any of these quite yet since they are still new enough to confuse anyone you’re sharing your web address with. By all means, buy one before it’s taken so that you have it in the future, but I wouldn’t use it as my primary domain yet.
Basically put, domain names are the “home address” for your website.
Building Platform:
To use the analogy of a true home, if the domain name is your address, then your building platform is what tools you have to build your house with.
Wordpress is by far the most popular system for building websites (at least for blogs).
There are many options out there:
Squarespace, IM Creator, WIX, Weebly, Web, etc.
The reason WordPress gets so much attention is that it’s an “Open Source Project” meaning that it is offered to everyone as a “free license” website builder tool (there is still a cost for website hosting which we’ll get to next). It is also known for it’s many plugins and add ons to offer almost anything you’d ever want in a website. Wordpress is the primary option for semi-coding website building (aside from pure coding alone).
However there’s a whole other route called: “What You See Is What You Get” or abbreviated as “WYSIWYG” (it can actually be found in it’s abbreviated form).
This form of Building Platforms is a drag and drop option much like if you were creating a powerpoint presentation. This allows people who don’t know any code to still make a website. Almost all other Platforms give this option or a combination of the two.
I hope all of this was helpful. I’d love to hear if you have more terms that you don’t understand or need clarification on. Also if you have anything to add to these definitions that I may have left out, please leave a comment. Again you can read the second part of this
2 part series at THIS LINK which talks about Website Hosting, Storage and Bandwidth.
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