The Fabulous World Wide Interwebs!
The web is just a giant bunch of trailer parks in the sky. You need three things to live there: a park, a trailer and an address.
- Your “web host” is the trailer park. You pay rent for the land, neighborhood maintenance and the ease of having utilities right there and ready for you. As the law stands in the US, anyone can visit anyone in any trailer park. There are some premium, gated communities, and folks who own their own land, mind you, but for regular web sites it’s pretty much irrelevant which host you have.
- Your website is your trailer. You own it. You can move it. It’s a giant hassle, but you can, indeed, move it.
- Your “domain name” is your street address on the web. It’s also known as your “url”, rhymes with girl. This is your www.name.com. The web is built up on parcel numbers (IP addresses) but we use domain names in everyday life. It’s a lot easier to tell someone to send a letter to P.O. Box 123456 in Chicago, IL than pull out surveyor maps for North Broadway. The same is true for the internet.
How do I pick a host? (Click to find out!)
But wait, what IS the internet? (Click to find out!)
A typographic, designological, visulicious extravaganza!