William E Hamilton, Jr.@Iman Fiqrie
CPLP

Website hosting and how do you buy a domain: your first domain?
ot so fast! If you've really read the first of my two articles; My CPLP Journey and Training and Development Line of Sight you probably can't wait to start hosting your own domain. If not, go back and re-read articles one and two. I'll get to web hosting rather quickly because it's been quite some time since the first article and I know you want to get going, I'll then double back and help fill in some needed gaps. Let's get going...

If you realize anything from the first two articles, it's that-- you kind of have to have a "line of sight" in order to get where you're going; however, I've also said a good plan done now is better than a perfect plan done late or not at all--something like that. My Captain on board ship used to tell us when we were trying to make detailed calculations before we executed a ship turning maneuver, you know where you're going-- in that direction right?"...put the #$%@ rudder over and steer in that direction, now!". We would do so, calculate and revise our course and speed en route to our ultimate destination. This analogy works well here because what one ultimately needs is a domain name and website hosting at a minimum. Believe it or not, that part's extremely easy! Just go to just about any website hosting company, create an account, search for a domain name that's available for purchase and buy it-- done! Problem,  you have no place to put it or host it. It's like having a name tag or card with no office space, place or desk to put it; have a look now on http://host.ciwlearning.com, see how easy it is to do and check out this short example.

How to buy a Domain Name walk-through
How to setup web hosting
So what you saw and what this means is that one needs to purchase a webhost plan or package before or around the same time you purchase your domain name. Usually if you try and purchase a Domain Name-- you'll be asked about hosting. But, you don't know what to purchase? You don't know what to do with it when you get it? What you don't necessarily want is to purchase a domain from one site and a web host from another (not good form); then you get into what's known as domain name transfers to another account and some other messy stuff you won't need as a beginner. Also watch out for the extra add-ons as you make your way to the Cart Checkout; like picking up candy on the way to the check-out counter at the grocery store-- looks good, but costly. The alternative for an organization is to just buy the whole package with learning management system (LMS) from a vendor (not necessarily a consultant, different) and forget about how it gets done-- maybe a $300 - 500,000 dollar mistake with training, certifications and add-ons (candy). Buy the domain name and web hosting package at one time and place. Once you have the equivalent of "a house," "apartment" in the case of Shared Hosting, you can put almost anything you want in it you desire-- almost; all web hosting packages are not the same.

In web hosting or website hosting (not the same), you have Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or Dedicated Servers-- whether it's in the Cloud or not. According to SiteGround, Cloud Computing is, "...hosting ...based on the most innovative Cloud computing technologies that allow unlimited number of machines to act as one system. Other hosting solutions (shared or dedicated) depend on one machine only,