So now you have a collection of webpages sitting on your harddrive. The next step is putting it on a server—a harddrive permanently connected to the internet that will allow visitors to view your website. If you belong to academic university, in all likelihood the university already provides you with a spot on their servers to host a website. If not, you are probably going to have to buy space from a professional hosting service.
There are a number of options available. Internet Service Providers may offer a small bit of webspace along with your subscription. For anything other than a small personal site, this space will not likely be enough for you needs. Of course, most other providers charge a large monthly fee. Small sites should be looking for service in the neighborhood of between $10 and $20 dollars per month. Dreamhost.com is one provider—the one hosting this very site. $10 a month gets enough server space and a dotcom. Few if any host matches this price for the same service, but search around for a provider that meets your own needs.
Most reputable hosts will include registering a domain for subscribers who sign up for a year of more of service. If you find a less reputable host, or are hosting your site on an academic server, you can register your dotcom through a forwarding service. Whenever your selected domain is accessed, the forwarding service will redirect the user to the actual host of the site. Again, Dreamhost.com provides this service.
There are still a few services on the web that will host your site for free, such as Geocities or Tripod. These are ad supported, and not probably the solution for a complex business or organizational website. Personal homepages should probably also overlook these free ad supported hosts, mainly because these sites are often ignored by search engines, have too many restrictions, and because the sites will not be taken seriously in most cases.
The next step is actually uploading your site and the corresponding data—graphics, PDF files, ect.—to the host server. Some hosts will provide online software that will allow the webmaster to upload through an HTML form. These forms are to some extent useful because the user needs to know nothing to upload files. On the other hand, uploading several hundred files at a time will grow cumbersome.
The other alternative, and one of the most popular methods is uploading your data through an FTP server. Your webhost provides the ftp server, and all you need is software to connect to the server. WS-FTP is one piece of software that will allow you to connect to the ftp server. There is a professional version for sale, or a free student version available for download.
Connecting with WS-FTP is simple. Install the software and enter three values: the ftp site, your username, your password. The ftp site will be provided by your host—similar to ftp.hostname.com. Your username and password are the combination you use to connect to your web host’s website.
WS-FTP is a similar file management system to windows. One window represents your harddrive, the other represents your server space. Transfering files is simple: double clicking on a file transfers it. One caveat with WS-FTP is that it is an older program, and sometimes will not recognize your windows desktop or "My Documents" folder. Instead, move your website directly your C:\ drive.
Getting your website online is not that challenging, and depending on your connection speed, the entire process should take only a few minutes. The only thing left to do is get some visitors.
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