Each person’s needs on the web are different, so we recommend you take a look through each of the sections below to find the right fit for your needs and budget.

In this article you will find:

• Free web services
• Registering a domain name
• Connecting a domain name to a free web service
• Purchasing hosting
• Connecting a domain name to a host

When you sign up for any of these services, be sure that you make a note of the passwords you establish with the providers and save any emails from them, as these contain important access information.

Free web services

These days, there are many companies that offer free web services of varying types. This kind of service is nice because there is no cost associated with it, and the tools provided are generally very easy to use, focusing on getting content up rather than getting bogged down in the coding/programming traditionally necessary for website building. Just a few providers to take a look at are:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Google Sites (students may use gm.slc.edu; others can sign up at sites.google.com)
• Facebook Pages
• Youtube for hosting videos
• Flickr for hosting images

A quick web search will reveal a multitude of other services, too.

Registering a domain name

When you register a domain name you are simply renting that name from the company, usually for a period of a year or more. If you ever choose not to renew your registration, it returns back to the pool so that anyone else may register it instead.

There are a variety of companies that provide domain name registration. Some to consider are:

• GoDaddy
• Network Solutions
• Register.com

Registering a domain name for one year will cost approximately $10 – $30 depending on the provider and options selected.

When registering your domain name, you may want to select the private registration option. Without private registration, your address, phone number, and email address are publicly accessible to anyone who chooses to look up who owns your domain name. Private registration allows you to hide this information for privacy reasons, as well as avoid spam.

Often, before checkout, the domain name registrar will offer you several add-on services. Consider these carefully, as they can increase the cost of registering without adding as much benefit as they advertise.

Connecting a domain name to a free web service

If you decide to go with a free web service you can still register a domain name and have it point to your page or account on this service. There are a couple of ways to do this.

Forwarding

When a visitor goes to your domain name, the web browser will simply redirect them to the site you have indicated.

1. Log in to the website of the company you registered your domain name with.
2. Look for a “forwarding” option.
3. Enter the web address of your page or profile on the free service (for example, http://freeservice.com/users/myprofile) as the address to forward to.
4. Make sure forwarding is enabled.
5. Save the changes.

It may take up to 24-48 hours for your site to be reachable via your domain name, although it may happen sooner.

Masking

Masking is similar to forwarding. The difference is that when the visitor is directed to the site you have specified, the browser’s address bar continues to display your domain name, not the actual address of your page or profile on the service’s site.

1. Log in to the website of the company you registered your domain name with.
2. Look for a “masking” option.
3. Enter the web address of your page or profile on the free service (for example, http://freeservice.com/users/myprofile) as the address to forward to.
4. Some domain name registers may allow you to enter additional optional information here.
5. Save the changes.

Purchasing hosting

Hosting is also a rental agreement – you purchase a certain amount of space, bandwidth (the amount of data that can be transferred), and services from a provider, usually for a period of months or years.

There are plenty of companies that provide hosting. When choosing a provider, you will want to consider the server’s uptime (how reliable it is), the support the host provides (how quickly they answer their clients’ questions), the services (do you need particular programming languages or applications to be available?), and cost, among other things.

Generally, hosting starts at about $5 per month and goes up from there, depending on the company and features of the plan selected. Sometimes hosts give a discount for paying for an entire year at once instead of a month at a time.

An excellent resource for gathering information and comparing hosts is Host Jury.

Once you have purchased a hosting plan, you will receive an email detailing how to transfer your web files to the site and other configuration information.

Connecting a domain name to a host

We recommend that you purchase your domain name and hosting from separate providers. This is because companies are usually best at one or the other of these services.  Also, if you ever choose to move to either a new domain name registrar or a new host, it is nice to have that flexibility without having to worry about both pieces of the puzzle.

If you have chosen two different companies provide these services, you now need to link them together so that the domain name points to where your web files sit on the host. To do this:

1. Locate the hosting provider’s nameservers. This should be provided in the host’s welcome email to you or somewhere on their website.
2. Log in to the website of the company you registered your domain name with.
3. Look for an option to set nameservers for your domain.
4. Delete any existing nameservers.
5. Enter the nameservers you located from your hosting provider into the fields on the domain registrar’s website.
6. Save the changes.

It may take up to 24-48 hours for the pages on your host to be reachable via your domain name, although it can be nearly instantaneous. This is called propagation.

Students have access to the Pages server for website development. Accounts on Pages are created and deleted according to our regular network account creation/deletion policies (http://pages.slc.edu/~support/?s=computer+accounts).

Only faculty who currently have faculty websites have access to the Pages web server.

Services available include:

• PHP (For the current version, see http://pages.slc.edu/~support/files/info.php). For security reasons, PHP operates in Safe Mode.
• MySQL database by request only – email esharp@slc.edu.

Services that are not available:

• CGI scripting
• The ability to deliver email via a script to non-SLC addresses.

Pages Server Terms of Use

These policies were created in order to keep the server up, running, and secure for all users. By using web space on Pages you agree to these terms.

Directory permissions

For all folders on Pages, permissions should be set to 775 (rwxrwxr-x) or more secure. Upload scripts may not work with these permissions, but they are necessary for security reasons.

Use of PHP $_GET

When using PHP scripting for page templating, a combination of $_GET for the page parameter and include() to display the contents of the page mentioned in that parameter must not be used.

Software installation

We do not recommend installing blogging or content management software on Pages. You may want to consider using a free version hosted elsewhere.

If you are already using such software on Pages, it must be upgraded to the most current release at least once per month.

General PHP security measures

When coding, be aware of general PHP security precautions. These include:

• Email header injection (http://damonkohler.com/2008/12/email-injection.html)
• MySQL injection (http://tizag.com/mysqlTutorial/mysql-php-sql-injection.php)
• More reading on general PHP security measures: http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/php-security