So you are a small business that wants to venture out onto the internet and want to know what is involved. What is required for you to have a live website for your business? Let’s go through the three main components required for a live website namely: The domain name, Website hosting and Website design. We will take you through the basics of what is needed for your business to go online.

What is a website?
A website is an electronic brochure about your business that can be viewed from the internet by anyone around the world at anytime. One excellent benefit of a website is that any changes to the website are immediately reflected throughout the world, thus ensuring that potential and existing clients are viewing accurate, up-to-date information about your business.

It is made up of a collection of pages called web pages. Each of these pages is typically made up of text, graphics or photographs and could contain sound and video clips. These pages are then linked together to form one website.

The three main requirements for a live website
The three main requirements for a live website are the domain name (also known as the website address), website hosting, and the website design (Creating the website pages).

How do they all come together?

Once the website pages are created, they are stored on website hosting computer and users can view these website pages by typing in the website address in their favourite internet browser. Now lets go through the details.

The domain name

A domain name (also known as a website address) uniquely identifies your website on the internet. It refers to the physical location of your website, so users can type in this domain name in their internet browser and they will be directed to your website. Our domain name or website address is www.webtirus.co.za.

You can place this website address on your correspondence and marketing material to direct potential or existing clients to your website. Domain names are usually prepaid for annually and are also renewable annually although you can pre-pay for your domain a number of years in advance.

Registering your domain name just ensures that you are the sole owner of the domain name because no two websites can have the same address. It also ensures that you have full control on what information is to be placed on your website.

The .co.za part of the domain name is called the domain extension, where in this case means that the website belongs to a company based in South Africa. A .com domain extension is usually seen to be an international company.

Website design
A website is made up individual web pages that are linked together. Examples of web pages could be the home page, the contact information page, and the products and services page. These are pages of related information about the business that are linked together to form a website for the business. Website design therefore refers the creation of these pages and linking them together to form a website in a format that can be read by internet browsers.

Website hosting

For people to view your website 24/7 world-wide, your website needs to be stored on a computer (“computer sever”) that is connected to the internet 24/7. This storage space is referred to as website hosting and is usually rented out at a monthly fee. The cost of website hosting has come down tremendously over the years and one can get in-expensive, reliable web hosting from various professional web hosting service providers.

These companies will host your website on their computer servers that are always connected to the internet, and are responsible for ensuring that your website is up 24/7. They also ensure that the basic tools needed for your website are installed, and there is protection against virus attacks, unauthorised access and so forth. This leaves you free to focus on the content of your website.

Webtirus Internet Solutions provides professional website design packages for small businesses at affordable prices. For as little as R 999, we will design your website that includes a contact form, register your domain name, host and maintain your website and also get your business listed in the most popular search engines. Choose between an Affordable Starter website package and a Joomla CMS website package.