®_______aimhigh.com
®_______aimhigh.com
What is an ISP?
An ISP is an Internet Service Provider; Aim High!, Inccorporated is an ISP offering US nation-wide connectivity, web hosting and other Internet services. Originally, ISP’s solely provided connectivity to the internet for people who were interested in doing web browsing, news group searches and posts, and sending e-mail. Connectivity consisted of dial-up connections, ISDN connections (still a telephone dial-up connection), or full data connections such as T1 and T3 which are high speed connections.
ISP’s were an adjunct to the on-line services that were available at the time. These were bulletin board dial-up systems that then connected to each other throughout the country. The original AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe were basically big bulletin board systems, and still are. Today, many other types of connectivity services have become available. For example, DSL, ADSL, wireless, satellite, etc. are available from many ISP’s.
As more people required access to the internet and more services became available in a cost effective manner, ISP’s began offering services such as their own e-mail servers, web hosting (see below), web design and phone service, etc.
What are the steps in setting up your web page?
1. Get A Domain Name (Aim High!, Inc. Domain Registration Services)
2. Get A Web Host (Aim High!, Inc. Hosting Services)
3. Create The Web Site (Aim High!, Inc. Development Services via E-Mail)
1. Get A Domain Name (Aim High!, Inc. Domain Registration Services)
Generally, the first step in setting up a web page is to get your domain name(s) or virtual real estate. Many ISP’s can provide this service, or you may need to go to a domain name registrar. A domain name is an identifier that tells computers how to look up your site on the internet. People generally relate to words and phrases better than they do to numbers; computers, however, don’t understand words and phrases. This is especially important when networking, which is what the internet is…a very large network. Computers understand numbers.
A domain name, is an identifier that allows a human being to choose a name, which is then connected to a number (IP or Internet Protocol Address) which is assigned to a computer at some location in the world. This allows the web page that you have created to come up. The process of putting in a domain name and having an IP address come back to the computer, and then your computer finding that computer is called DNS resolution or resolving a domain name.
Some of the more popular domain names end in the ".com" extension or the ".net" extension. These are called gTLD’s (Generic Top Level Domains). There are also some other extensions known as ccTLD’s (Country Code TLD’s). Cost for a domain name can range from as low as $7 per registration year, to $35 per year per registration. Most of the registrars that are under $15 a year either do not have offices in the United States or when you register with them, have restrictions that keep you from actually having control over the domain name. One of the most common ways they do this is to make themselves the Administrative Contact on a domain name.
The Administrative Contact is the legal representative for the domain, and has the power to change ownership, name servers (where the domain is pointing to find a page), address information and telephone information. Do be very careful when registering domain names and make sure you are the Administrative Contact, and that you or your ISP becomes the Technical Contact. This will protect you from all sorts of problems with your domain name in the future.
Your domain name becomes your brand identity, so it is very important that you protect your domain name and ownership of the license of this domain name properly. Price should only be a secondary consideration in registering a domain. The primary concern is how much control do you have over your brand.
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2. Get A Web Host (Aim High!, Inc. Hosting Services)
Once you have the domain name, you need to get a web host. Many ISP’s and domain registrars offer this. Some of the same caveats for registering a domain name also apply to a web hosting company. In general, it is safest to go either with your registrar, who you registered your domain name with, or with your local ISP. If your registrar provides hosting for you, part of their agreement may be to make themselves the Administrative Contact as well as the Technical Contact on your domain. If this is the case, they can take ownership of your domain name. IF YOU ARE NOT THE ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT FOR YOUR DOMAIN YOU CAN EASILY LOSE OWNERSHIP OF THE DOMAIN. (See Administrative Contact above.)
There are two large registrars/web hosts in the world who have, unfortunately, been doing this. When the owner of a domain name is no longer satisfied with the registrars service, and asks to have their web page moved, they are told "you can download your web page, but the domain name stays here." Unfortunately you have no recourse, legal or otherwise to get that domain name back (unless the name is a registered Trademark, which was granted before the domain name was registered). When you first registered and signed up for their web hosting, you agreed that they would be the legal representative and owner of the domain name. It is probably a good idea to contact your registrar or web host prior to setting up your domain name and ensure that yours will be the name that appears as the registrar of record and as the Administrative Contact for that domain.
Another popular alternative is web-hosting-only companies. These third party web hosts add another layer of confusion into access, use and technical issues regarding your web site. For example, if you are unable to bring your web page up someday, the problem could be with your ISP, i.e. your connection to the internet may be down. If your web site is hosted at your ISP, and you are able to make a connection to the internet, even if your web host’s connection to the rest of the internet is down, you should be able to get to your site on their machine. This makes it easy for you to figure out where the problem is, and you can call your ISP and resolve it.
If you are hosting at your registrar and you are able to get to the internet and you are able to access other web sites, then you can be fairly certain that the problem is between your ISP and the registrar. You can call the registrar to make sure their systems are up and working properly, then call your ISP to check the same. However, with a third party web host, if you cannot access the site, but you can see other sites, it indicates your ISP is working properly. There may be a problem at the registrar or there may be a problem at the web host. Which one do you call? Most likely, you will call your web host first. In most cases, the first thing your web host will say is "it is obviously a problem with your ISP" or "there is a problem with the registration of your domain name." Unfortunately, as an ISP we hear this all too often.
When a problem like this occurs, generally it is with the third party web host. Because they do not have the technical expertise that an ISP or your registrar would have, and they cannot help work through the technical issues that may be involved.
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3. Create The Web Site (Aim High!, Inc. Development Services via E-Mail)
Web pages are created in a language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Web hosting servers send HTML programming information across the internet to your browser and your browser then interprets these HTML codes to create the images and text on your screen.
HTML is a relatively simple language, as far as programming languages go. But it is still a programming language. There are a number of software packages that allow you to create graphic front ends to your HTML pages so that you work in straight text and graphics. The package then interprets this and creates the HTML code for you.
Having a page created is a requirement of web hosting. When someone types an address, for example, www.aimhigh.net/dsl.html, their computer goes out to the internet and requests the location of www.aimhigh.net from a DNS server. The DNS server then tells the browser to connect to a particular server somewhere on the internet. The browser does this, and requests a page on the site called aimhigh.net called dsl.html. That server, www.aimhigh.net, then sends the HTML code across the internet to the browser, the browser interprets it and places the "page" (a combination of text and graphics) on your screen.
There are other specialty languages that you can add on to HTML to modify and increase the usability of the site. Some of these languages are Java, Perl, or you can write custom programs called CGI’s, known as Computer Gateway Interfaces.
Java programming language, originally written by Sun Microsystems, allows you to do more functional things with your web page. For example, a Java script can be written for you to enter 2 numbers in 2 separate fields and then add those together to place in a 3rd field on an HTML page. HTML in and of itself is only, by definition a markup language, which allows you to show where things are going to appear on a page, as opposed to Java which allows you to manipulate data and then re-present it on the screen. The example of Java we’ve given is very simplistic. Java can be used to create a number of different types of applications directly on a web page.
Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language), is a cross-platform, interpreted language that functions on a wide variety of platforms. This is another programming language that allows you to create applications that run behind web pages that will do processing on the server computer and then provide output that can the be displayed in your browser. For more information on Perl and how to set your system up to run Perl applications, point your browser to: http://www.perl.com.
The main difference between Java and Perl, is that Java, generally, is loaded to your browser and the calculations and manipulations take place on your machine. With Perl, the information is passed to the server machine, the server manipulates it, and then the results are passed back to your browser.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both of these programs. The advantage of Java is that it’s going to run a lot faster, and it’s going to run on a lot of different platforms as written. Java was originally written as a generic programming language and it would work with any browser. However, some companies have written their own versions of Java that are not compatible between browsers. Many times, Java that will work for one browser, won’t work for another, which makes your web programming much more difficult.
In most cases, a Perl script will work on any browser. However, it does have to be written to run on the platform that your server is running on. You will need to contact your ISP to see if Perl will run on their servers, and what format Perl must be written in to work with their server. For example, if your web host provider is using Unix Servers, the Perl that is written for them will not run, as is, on a Windows machine, and the opposite is also true. The Perl code is very similar, but there are changes in some of the syntax that need to be made before they will work properly.
CGI’s are usually written in something like Perl or a programming language like C or C++. CGI’s are machine specific, and if you use them on your web page, be sure that the server that you are putting them on supports the platform that CGI was written for. For example, Windows CGI’s may not work on a Unix machine and, depending on the directory structure of the machine that you are sending them to, they may not work on another Unix machine.
A good web hosting company can provide all of this information for you, and may also be able to provide some pre-built CGI’s that you can use to enhance your web site. Many web hosting companies can also either create the page for you to put on their servers, or direct you to a design firm that can help you create these pages. We highly recommend going to a design firm to have your pages created. Most ISP’s have excellent technical skills, but do not have the creative graphics and visual expertise to make good looking as well as functional web sites.
Many sites these days are created with a front-end product called Front Page. We strongly discourage people from utilizing Front Page as their development platform for a couple of reasons. In many instances, the plug-ins that Front Page have built into it will only work on certain models of Windows machines, and will not work at all on other platforms such as Unix and Macintosh. Also, the overall feeling of a Front Page created web site is very generic. If you go out to the web and look at web pages, you will get the idea as to which pages have been created generically using something like Front Page, and those that have the time put into them to create them as quality, graphically oriented, publish oriented web sites. Designed pages grab your attention and are easy to read, as well as provide information.
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