Mystery? What Mystery?

MANY WEB PRESENCE PROVIDERS and web page design firms would have you believe that designing and maintaining a WWW site is a big mystery and too hard for the average business person to attempt. That is just not the case! You can do it yourself - both design and maintain your site - and save a lot of money in the process. Most businesses find that a web site pays for itself after 1 to 2 months of uptime - in exposure, customer relations, and sales!

BELOW WE'LL explain the basics of how web hosting works and offer links to pages within our site where you can learn more about the topics covered. These are just a few of the most common questions asked by beginners. The first step is to grasp the difference between Internet Access and Internet Presence. An access account lets you connect to the Internet. A presence, or web hosting, account gives you a parking spot on the Internet where you park your web pages.

TO CREATE A WEB SITE you don't have to set up your own dedicated line with a web server connected to the Internet. All you need is your home computer or office computer and a regular dial-up Internet access account. And you'll need a Presence Account, a spot on our web servers to park your web pages. You'll use your access account to communicate with our web servers and make changes on your web site. Your web site will be visible at all times to people browsing the web, and the host server will be connected to the Internet with very fast, high capacity DS3 lines.

WHEN YOU PURCHASE a Sphynx Hosted Site account, Virtual Domain or Virtual Server account, we'll help you get started. Our Tech Support pages will help you over many obstacles. Plus, any time you run into a technical problem that just has you stumped, you can send an email to support@sphynx.com for same-day help!

WHEN YOU ORDER an account, you'll receive a configuration email with detailed instructions for connecting to and uploading to your site. You'll design your web pages locally on your own computer, then dial in to the Internet and transmit your pages to your web account on our servers. If you're ready to put your site up now, you can go to the order pages.

What do I need to create a World Wide Web page for my business and put it on the Internet?

The minimum requirement is a computer and fast modem (minimum 14.4 kbps) at home or at work and a dial-up PPP Internet access account. An account with AOL or other online service will work fine. Plus, you will need a Commercial Web Site Account like those Sphynx Web Solutions provides. Often, your local access provider will give you a personal, non-commercial Web site free of charge with your dial-up account. You can put a personal page on that site and use at least one link on it to direct visitors to your commercial site.
You'll also need some specialized software, which you can get quite easily and at no initial expense on the Internet. Much of the software available is shareware (though some is freeware).

I've learned a little HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) on my own and designed a page I like. How do I put it on the Internet?

First you must lease disk space on a Web Server computer that is always connected to the Internet. After you've decided on and leased your Web host space, the basic steps are:

• Design your pages
• Design or locate the necessary graphics elements for the page
• Upload your HTML code as a text file and your graphics as type .gif or .jpg binary graphics files using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to your web account directory on Sphynx's server.

Getting your web site up and running is easy with Sphynx Web Solutions. When you sign up for a 2MB Copper Account, anyone in any location browsing the Web will be able to view and interact with your Web pages when they know your URL. It will look something like:

Purchase a Nickel or Bronze Virtual Domain account or a full featured Virtual Server and we will register your chosen domain name. Your site can be accessed with a URL like:

We set up your account and give you a secret password that will allow only you to login to your directory using some type of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client software on your home or office computer. FTP clients such as Fetch, for Macintosh, or WS_FTP for Windows (versions available for both 16 bit and 32 bit OS's) work fine. When you login to the Sphynx server, you will be in your root directory. Using the FTP client you can make a directory hierarchy and upload and download files as you wish, 24 hours a day.

I'm still a little fuzzy about how this works. Is there a steep learning curve? Will It take quite a while to learn how? Is there programming involved?

You can have your web site up today. Order your Sphynx Hosted Site at no initial cost to you and get two weeks FREE to "ramp up" your Web site. Open an account today by filling out our online form and submitting it. Within 8 hours we'll have your site configured and send you an email message with your password and step-by-step instructions for uploading and maintaining files on your Web site.
Programming? All HTML "programming" involves, at its most basic, is inserting predefined tags around text to "mark up" its appearance. Also, you must learn how to include graphics on your pages by inserting a simple line of HTML that tells the webserver where to find your graphics. Web design is fairly easy, and there are thousands of resources on the Web to help you learn how.

I've seen Web sites with little counters and clocks on them. Will I be able to do that on my Web pages? What about handling order forms?

Yes. We have several cgi (Common Gateway Interface) scripts and programs you can use that will allow you to do the following:

• Put a graphical "hit" counter on your home page that will count how many times your page is visited by potential customers.
• Put an on-page graphical representation of a digital clock on any page on your site. The "clock" will display the time for the time zone you specify when the page is loaded by the browser (see our home page).
• Add a graphical display showing the date.
• Add a "guestbook" where visitors can leave comments.
• Add an online order form that a user can fill out and submit. The information they submit in the form will be emailed to you automatically.

Our Tech Support pages have further instructions on how to use these scripts so you can easily make your web pages more interesting and functional.

I'm concerned about choosing the right Web account. Do I need a Sphynx Hosted Web Site a Sphynx Virtual Domain Site, or do I need a Sphynx Virtual Server?

The answer to that depends on your level of computer expertise and the size and extent to which you think your Web site will grow. A virtual server provides a powerful base from which to serve your company or home business web site. Plus, as server administrator, you decide how to configure the web server and what cgi scripts and programs to use. With a Gold or Platinum account you can create additional user ftp/email accounts so you can even sublet web sites if you wish. To use a virtual server, you will need to learn just a few Unix shell commands and be comfortable with a terminal interface. We'll be here to help, so don't feel intimidated! Plus you'll receive a hard copy of our administrator's manual with instructions and helpful tips. The Virtual Domain and Hosted Web Site accounts both provide a firm base for serving your web pages and both are upgradeable to a Virtual Server account.

I want my own domain name. Can I do that with a Sphynx Hosted Site account?

Our lowest priced account, the Copper 2MB Hoste Site, is the only Sphynx Account that does not offer the option of your own domain name. A Sphynx Nickel (5MB) or Bronze (10MB) Virtual Domain Account includes registration of your chosen domain name. And, of course, with a Virtual Server Account you get your choice of available domain names. account, you get your own domain. Be sure to check the availability of your choice of domain names with our domain search form.

Can I resell Sphynx Site accounts? In other words, can I design pages for other people and buy accounts for them from Sphynx?

Yes. We encourage value-added reselling. Web designers and entrepreneurs are welcome to resell Sphynx Hosted Site/Virtual Domain accounts or to purchase Sphynx Virtual Server accounts and sublet them. We'll help you with the technical details. As your web site "wholesaler" we will work with you to iron out any technical difficulties. If you have clients with design, programming or scripting needs, you may resell our services in those areas transparently if you wish. Email us for more information about reselling.

Can I accept credit cards and do business on my Web site? What does it take?

Yes. You can do business on the Internet, and more and more businesses are doing just that. From online catalog orders to online banking via the World Wide Web, the Internet is changing the way the world does business. We now lease directories on our secure server with special rates for site or server customers. Check out our special page, Secure Transactions on the Web.

I like using the Internet, but I don't quite get it. Is the World Wide Web the same as the Internet?

The Web is one way to use the Internet. The Internet consists of several million computers connected in various network arrangements, but they all can, one way or another, "see" each other and find each other. The bond that they all share is a common way of communicating, TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.
Think of the Internet as a huge city, spanning the globe. The computers are the offices and office workers in each building. The building is a local network with the hallways and elevators connecting each individual "computer" to the whole, and the city streets and highways are all the cables and networks connecting all the subnetworks. Taxis and couriers carrying messages from one office across town to another office represent the messages that one computer sends another on the Internet. The traffic rules they observe and the street signs they use to find and get to their destinations could be called their "transmission control protocol."

What do you mean by Web servers, and how does a Web server work?

The Internet may be used in many ways; the Web is currently the most popular. Another popular use is sending and receiving email. Another is posting opinions and information in newsgroups. Other uses, based on TCP/IP, include (among others) downloading files from remote computers using file transfer protocol (FTP), retrieving information from a "gopher" server, using Telnet to run a program on a remote computer, chatting with strangers and friends using Internet relay chat (IRC), and using the World Wide Web, as you're doing now.
The page you are reading resides on a "server" or a host computer that is always connected to the Internet. The computer hosting this web page could be physically located just about anywhere, as long as it were connected to the Internet with a reasonably fast connection.
Here's how you are able to view this page: Your Web browser sent a message, a request, to this remote computer, where this page is located, and asked Sphynx's server to retrieve this page. Sphynx's server obliged and transmitted the text and graphic information (including instructions in HTML about how to assemble the page) to your Web browser over the Internet. Your browser received that text and those images and the HTML instructions about how the data was to be displayed and constructed the page you see before you.

Have a Question? Ask Us Directly!

If there's something about web serving we've forgotten to cover that you are curious about or need help with, don't hesitate to send us your question. Just use the form below to submit your question. Be sure to include your email address.

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