Web hosting & domain names

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Uniform Resource Name (URN)

URI vs. URL vs. URN

http://danielmiessler.com/study/url_vs_uri/

URL includes the Name of the resource AND how to access it

All URLs are URIs but not vice versa

www.bbc.co.uk is NOT a URL◦ No resource name◦ No access mechanism

http://www.midfest.org.uk/livestage.html

The above example IS a URL because it includes:◦ Resource name livestage.html◦ Access method http://www.midfest.org.uk

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986 is the URL for RFC3986 which explains URIs in great detail!

So...

TLD = Top Level Domain e.g.◦ .com◦ .net◦ .uk◦ .fr

IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) runs the ◦ TLD database◦ DNS Root Zone

IANA delegates domain registration

TLDs / DNS / IANA

Country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) e.g. .uk, .fr, .ca, .de, itGeneric TLDs (gTLDs) e.g. .com, .edu, .net

All devices (hosts) on the Internet have an IP address

e.g. the IP address for the BBC website is212.58.246.93

Domain Name System (DNS)

Humans can’t remember numbers well Domain Name System allows us to use

alpha-numeric domain names Part of basic PC configuration is to specify IP

address of 1 or more DNS servers Normally provided by your ISP but you can

use others e.g. ◦ OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220)◦ Google (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4)

Domain Name System (DNS)

How DNS works

If a domain name is not held in the local cache, the query will be passed along to the next level potentially right up to the Root Servers

This happens for every internet resource you try to access.

DNS Root Servers

http://www.iana.org/domains/root/servers

Each of these named authorities is actually a network of many servers

Private, public purpose company◦ Has members rather than shareholders◦ £400 joining fee plus £100 p.a. Subscription

Run the .uk TLD since 1996 Will run .wales and .cymru from 2015 Other .brands e.g. .bbc from 20?? Other services include Dispute Resolution

and WHOIS Nominet delegates most domain

registrations

Nominet

http://www.nominet.org.uk/whoweare/whatwedo

Domainregistration/hosting

Websitehosting

Domain name / website hosting

Domain AND web hosting

Web hosting ONLY

Virtually any hosting package (even domain only) will include email forwarding to avoid this situation…

Company has a domain namehttp://www.24hrbreakdownandrecoveryservices.co.uk/

BUT gives immek1@hotmail.comas the email address

Email addresses / forwarding

Choose a Linux Hosting account if you're going to use PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, or CGI scripting. Our Linux accounts use a MySQL database.

Choose a Windows Hosting account if you're going to use ASP, ASP.NET, or ASP.NET 2.0. Our Windows hosting customers typically use a SQL Server (MS SQL) or Access database.

Windows v. Linux

Source: http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/2520/should-i-choose-a-windows-or-linux-hosting-account

Depending on technologies used, you can carry out local testing

Websites go “live” when uploaded to a web server.

Often referred to as “publishing” the site Websites are generally uploaded using FTP Some web development tools include a

built-in FTP client

Uploading websites

Filezilla FTP client

Local files

Remote folders

Remote files

Commands window

Site Manager

Generally website files & folders are uploaded to public_html (or similar)

Need a default file e.g. index.html Use lower-case for file and folder names

◦ Easier then remembering when you used upper-case

Don’t use spaces in file names◦ Otherwise they show up as %20 in the URL

Folder structures / file names