Sometimes we need to find information about a domain name or website. Maybe it’s an address, a phone number, or where a domain is hosted. You can search a domain name in a whois database and you’ll find information.

A Whois search allows us to do this – it’s a public database that contains all kinds of information, about every domain name registered on the internet. To find this kind of information, you need to search a special database. You can search Google for the phrase whois search or you can use one of the sites listed here:

http://betterwhois.com
http://allwhois.com

My favorite whois search on the web is BetterWhois. All you do is type the domain name in the text box – make sure to include the .com or .net.

We’re looking for information about the domain notarealdomain.com which just happens to be a registered domain. The registrant has decided to use the registrar’s privacy features, so you won’t see any addresses or names that apply directly to the registrant:

Domain Name: NOTAREALDOMAIN.COM
Registrar: NEW DREAM NETWORK, LLC
Whois Server: whois.dreamhost.com
Referral URL: http://www.dreamhost.com
Name Server: NS1.DREAMHOST.COM
Name Server: NS2.DREAMHOST.COM
Name Server: NS3.DREAMHOST.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 19-mar-2008
Creation Date: 19-mar-2008
Expiration Date: 19-mar-2009

So, what are you looking at?

You’ll also see this:

Registrant Contact - This is who owns the domain.
Administrative Contact - This is who is in charge of the domain.
Technical Contact - This is who you contact if there’s a problem.
Billing Contact - This is who pays for the domain.

All of the contact info can be the same, or it can be different. In this particular case, the information is all the same – it’s under the Registrar’s contact info, because the registrant wants privacy so the contact information is hidden. Privacy registrations look like this:

notarealdomain.com Private Registrant
notarealdomain.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
A Happy DreamHost Customer
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

If you want to find where a domain is hosted, you can read through the whois – once in a while the info is there. Usually you’ll need to take the nameserver domain name (without the ns1. before the domain name) and do a whois on that. This can go on endlessly, depending on how the host is set up.

I’ve seen alot of hosting companies trying to capitalize on the green movement. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being green and doing your part, we all need to. I try to do my part as an individual, but I can’t claim to be green by any stretch of the imagination, because I’m not.

But, can web hosting really be green? Really and truly?

I seriously question this. I mean, when I think of hosting, and green, the first thing that comes to my mind is power, like solar power (which I think is a really neat idea) or wind power.

So, say for example, you have a really mission critical website, you absolutely cannot afford to be down, you’ll lose
millions of dollars – per minute! if the site does go down.

Imagine this scenario. Your website goes down, so you call your hosting company, which is a green web hosting company, and they use solar power. You call support. If you’re lucky the hosting company uses old fashioned phones that don’t need electricity to work. You know the kind I mean. The conversation goes something like this:

Customer: Hi, my website is down
Support: Yea there’s no sun today. Everybody’s down.
Customer: When will it be up?
Support: Dunno. When the sun comes out.
Customer: When will that be?
Support: Dunno. That’s up to God I guess.
Customer: (Getting angry now) Well then, can I talk to God?

See what I’m getting at here?

A web hosting company really can’t claim to be green.

They can, however, take steps to do their part for the environment:

By cutting down on paper usage
Cutting back on support hours (use less electricity that way)
Recycling old server parts wherever possible and keep them out of landfills

But until technology progresses further, web hosting companies are limited. Just because they say they are green, it doesn’t mean they are.

I’ve installed Apache, PHP and Mysql separately before, but never XAMPP. I thought it was going to be a huge job, boy was I wrong.

The install took all of five minutes. This application installs the Apache webserver, PHP, Perl and Mysql. All at once. I haven’t tested the Perl yet, but PHP is working just fine. This post has been written in a copy of Wordpress that I installed.

XAMPP Install

The XAMPP install goes like any Windows program, just make sure you download the installer (the zip file should have the word installer right in the filename.) Double click the .exe file, it will ask you where you want to install it, choose the default. My copy is installed on XP Pro.

Make sure you have easy access to the XAMPP Control Panel. This is important.

Once you have XAMPP installed, go to the XAMPP Control Panel.

Click Service.

Click Run XAMPP Control Panel as service.

Check at the very least Apache and Mysql. The other 2 are the Filezilla FTP server and a mail server. You really don’t need them.

Go to the browser of your choice and type in: http://localhost/ This will bring up some of the documentation.

That’s it. It’s so easy a caveman can do it! Seriously!

Any files you are going to use, or want to view in a browser, should go in the C:\xampp\htdocs folder. This can be changed, if you want to tackle the Apache configuration file: httpd.conf.

So you want to start a website but you don’t have any idea how to go about it? Here are a few guidelines.

First, decide on what kind of web hosting you want. Questions to consider:

• Do you want a free site?
• Or are you willing to pay for it?
• Will it be a business site?
• Will it be a personal or hobby site?

If you have a business, then you should buy web hosting space, and you should buy (or rent) a first level domain name as well. A first level domain name looks like http://technicalconfusion.com

If you just want to build a personal page or a hobby page, a free site with a third level domain name is fine for this. You would get a third level domain name (or subdomain) with a personal page, with an URL that looks like http://example.technicalconfusion.com or http://technicalconfusion.com/example/

Read more about domain names here.

What should you look for when looking for a paid webhosting provider?

There are plenty of webhosting options available:

• http://godaddy.com
• http://hostgator.com
• http://flawebworks.com
• http://lunarpages.com

When you are first starting out, it may seem like you don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with hosting accounts.

You may not need them right away but sometime down the line, chances are you’re going to want to try them at the very least. Get in the habit of comparing web hosting packages. Go for the smallest package in terms of space and bandwidth, but do make sure they offer everything a larger package offers. Even if you only get 1 of everything “extra” that’s ok.

Sitebuilders

Many hosting companies offer a sitebuilder account. This can be a good choice or a bad choice. I have never used one personally, but I hear they are very restrictive and you may simply be better off learning html or hiring someone to do it. (Chances are good you know a kid in your family who is interested in this stuff and probably already has a web page of their own.) And there is nothing wrong with learning to do it yourself – at the very least learning the basics so you could fix a potential problem. You could take a cheap course and learn the basics at http://vu.org/

While you’re looking around at different web hosting packages and deciding what you want, you should be thinking about a domain name. Assuming you plan on buying a domain name, get it registered at least. If you wait, there’s always a chance that someone else may decide to register it.

I do not recommend getting your hosting and domain with the same company.

Once you’ve registered a domain name, and purchased hosting, then you need to transfer the domain name to your web hosting company’s nameservers.

Once you have web hosting

Once you have the domain name and hosting, and the type of account you signed up for, it’s time to get started.

And before I go any further, just let me say that there is not a whole lot you can do that will break your hosting account. So don’t be nervous. Do get in the habit of backing up your files.

You should have received a welcome or activation email from your hosting company. Read and save this email. It contains information pertaining to your account, like:

• Your userid and password
• How to access your account
• Control panel information
• FTP instructions
• Email Setup

Just to name a few.

First thing you do is log in and get to know your control panel, so that the next time you really need to find something there, it won’t scare you to death. Go in to the mail setup and setup an email account and test it. Or set up a forward and test that. Or both.

If you have a sitebuilder type account, log in per your hosting instructions and build a page.

If you don’t have a sitebuilder account, then there is more work involved, but that’s ok.

First, you’ll have to build your page using an html editor or notepad, if you are familiar with html.

Once you have built the webpage, upload it, using FTP. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect – websites are always a work in progress and rarely get finished.

www.GoDaddy.com

I am really impressed with GoDaddy. Domain name registration prices are good: they regularly run at $8.95, but if you purchase other non-domain products, you can get quite a deal on your domain name.

Be sure to read their forms as you go – there’s alot there and you could miss something or sign up for something you really don’t want. When you first sign up, it takes about 24 hours for your info to get into the system – the domain name registration will show up within this time – but no later than 48 hours. This is pretty standard for any domain registration.

But what truly impressed me is that after my initial signup with Godaddy domain registratrion, I decided to register another domain name. I went thru the process, registered the domain name, opted for custom nameservers, paid and went on my way.

Two hours later, for giggles, I decided to see if I could bring up the domain name in my favorite Whois.
Not only did the domain name show in Whois, on my nameservers, but the domain name actually came up on the internet. It seemed there was no propagation involved! This was a complete thrill – I always expect at least 24 hours for a new domain name registration to propagate internet-wide.

Changing your nameservers with GoDaddy

1. Log into your account at Godaddy
2. Go to Domains/My Domains
3. Select the domain name you want to change
4. Click on the nameservers you want to edit
5. Change both nameservers in both text boxes
6. Click the orange OK button in the lower right hand corner.

That’s it. You’re done. If the domain name is a new one, the name will only take a few hours to propagate across the internet. If the domain is established, and you are merely transferring servers, it will take a bit longer, usually no more than 48 hours. It can take longer, however.

www.GoDaddy.com offers several products including web hosting, dedicated servers, and email along with domain registration.

A domain name is a name that resolves to an IP address, which is listed in a huge DNS database. You can think of this database as a phone book. The IP address is a phone number, and the domain name is the name that has the phone number.

Computers find each other by IP address, which looks like this: 123.123.123.123. This format is hard for a human to remember, so this is where a domain name comes into the picture. A human can remember a domain name, and so domain names are created to be more user friendly.

Parts of a Domain Name

There are several parts to a domain name. Let’s look at the domain name http://www.technicalconfusion.com

We will be starting with the far right, and read left.

.com – This is what’s called a “top level” domain name. It literally means commercial. There are others: .org for organization, .net for network, .ca for Canada. The list goes on.

technicalconfusion. – this is a first level domain name, which is off of the tree of the .com top level domain – to the left. “technicalconfusion.” resolves to your root folder, or user id given to you for your webhosting account.

www. – to the left of the top level and first level domain names, is a second level domain name, or, making it more complicated here, a subdomain. (Technically, everything other than the .com domain is nothing but a subdomain.)

You can continue making lower level domain names, although it’s impractical for a normal user to do this.

To get a first level domain name, you must go to a domain name registrar for this. My personal favorite is Godaddy.com, and even though I’ve used a number of registrars, they so far have been the best.

Recommended reading about DNS

DNS and Bind

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a way of transferring files from one computer to another, and is commonly used to upload webpages to your website.

Below I list a few FTP programs that have been around for years. While I haven’t tried all of them (I don’t have a MAC), most of them are easy to use, even for beginners.

The thing to remember when you are FTPing to another server, is all you’re doing is navigating around on another computer (with restrictions, of course).

Most programs allow you to change the view, so by all means, change the view to one you’re most comfortable with. All the programs I’ve seen have had a “Windows Explorer” type view available.