Understanding the set up of one's own website
Its only last week that I got my very first website up and running all by myself! And I cannot wait to tell you how I did it all :)
Here is a step by step process to learn to set up one's own website. (More minute and technical details in the other post for the interested readers.)
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Buy a domain name
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Think of a domain name for your website. (eg: 'humlog' in my case)
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Check for its availability here. (If your domain name is available for use on .com, thats the best go. If not, then you can consider other options like .net, .in etc. E.g: I chose humlog.net because humlog.com was already booked.)
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Now go to any domain name registrars' website and buy your domain name from there. Usually the cost per domain is ~10$ /year.
I use namecheap.com Click on
Select "Register a Domain" 
Enter your domain name. The result page will show a checkbox against the available domains. Tick it.
Add to cart and checkout.
So far, so good. Now that you have a domain name, you would want to use it to communicate something important to the world. For that you need to have a server space where you can put content:
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Host your content
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Choose any hosting provider and buy a hosting plan that suits you best. (eg: I chose linode as the hosting provider). The cost of hosting (buying server space) starts from 4-5$/month.
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Configure your files. When you buy a plan, hosting providers gives you access to a directory where you can put your content files like php/html files, images, etc. (eg: I have installed drupal on my directory)
Now that you have configured the server, you need a way to tell the machines on web your site's address, i.e. IP address (to find your site when some one enters your domain name).
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Setup Name Server.
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Domain Name Server Setup means mapping your human readable site name to machine readable IP addresses. To enable this you need to choose a Name Server. You can use the name servers of your domain name registrar or can choose to have nameservers of your hosting provider (eg: I chose linode's name server). Most of the times, name server setup is free of cost.
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Once you have set up the name server, you need to tell your domain registrar the identity of your name servers (eg: in my case it was ns1.linode.com, ns2.linode.com...). Enter this information in 'Domain Name Server Setup' section of your registrar's site.
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Bingo! Your site is now visible to the world! Cheers!
Category: internet-technologies
I have never hosted a website from scratch and totally loved reading this first hands-on experience..