I'd like to have a site on the World Wide Web for my business, cause, club, family, hobby (or a million other reasons) - What Do I Need?

This FAQ assumes that this question is in relation to site setup and administration as opposed to site creation. If you are wondering what kind of materials you need to collect in order to put a site together, please see the FAQ 'how do we get started?'.

We're assuming this is your first web site and site setup is foreign, so, very basically: all sites need a name and a place to live. You pay for the name and the site's home separately, although if you buy both from the same place that is easy to overlook.

1) Name also considered the site's address; technically called a 'domain name'... This is the 'something dot com' (such as artemiscomputing.com) which people use to refer to your site. Names may also be something.org or .biz or .info or a variety of other extensions. You have to pay an annual fee to a 'registry' to have a domain name. Artemis Computing is not a registry. Network Solutions is an example of a registry. Until they were legally required to open the market, you had to get all domain names from Network Solutions. This fee can range from nothing to $8 to $35, depending on whether it is part of your hosting plan, where you get it, and how long you pay for more

2) Physical Location  also called hosting or server space - usually rented from a hosting service... This is the place your site lives which makes it accessible to people browsing the internet Usually involves a monthly expense of $10 to $30 plus any specialty services, with the average cost approx. $15/month Hosting services include various options but they almost never include internet access without additional fees, whether it is dial-up or high speed, even if you use your current ISP more  Additional 3rd party services, which often work in conjunction with the hosting service, can needed for sites receiving payments via the internet, such as e-commerce or donations

Technically you do not have to purchase either a name or a home for your web site if you already have free space with your Internet Service Provider. Just to confuse everyone, although people do not get internet access by purchasing hosting, most of the time people do get web site space by purchasing internet access without any additional charge. Although the service is limited, it can be appropriate for some sites.

One limitation of the free hosting service with your ISP is that normally you do not get to assocate a name with your web site. Instead the name you give people will probably be a little long and look like a file subdirectory address, because it is. An advantage is that you do not have the expense of the name, but lately that is under $10/year. The hosting is the more expensive item by a factor of 10 or more.

Another limitation is the size of the space allowed for your site and whether you need any special email addresses, and no reports on site usage. Whether you care or not depends on whether you are planning to include a lot of photos or media on your site.

An additional consideration is whether you plan to stay with that ISP. If you move, your site address will change.

Because of the limits, free ISP associated web site hosting usually isn't recommended for businesses, but it can be appropriate for some professionally done personal sites and also some non profits.