Information about the Internet

Welcome. We are very excited that you have joined our services, and would like to introduce you to the Internet. The following are a few of the terms and concepts you should know:

1. Domain: Your domain belongs to you and no one else, as long as you keep paying the ownership fee to Network Solutions, Inc. (aka. Internic). The first time you register your domain, Network Solutions will ask you for $70.00 which will give you ownership rights to the domain name for two years. After the two years, you are required to pay Network Solutions $35 a year to keep the domain. A domain name is always composed of two parts, a name followed by a suffix. For example, the domain "food.com" is composed of its name "food" and the suffix ".com".
   
   
2. Email: Email is a communication tool that uses the Internet as its protocol to reach its destination. An email address is composed of its email username and the email's domain name. For example, the email account or email address "sales@food.com" is composed of its username "sales" followed by the at sign "@" followed by the domain name "food.com".
   
   
3. Site: All the information and pages contained under one domain name constitute a site. Your site will reside on our servers so that anyone connected to the Internet can view it at any time. We have reserved a specific amount of space on the server for your site and information, according to your package. In order to store your pages on the server, you must use a process called FTP, which is explained below. Your site can only be viewed through a browser (what you are using right now to read this). Your information can be presented in any way or format you want, although it is suggested that you develop your pages in a way that is compatible with most browsers. This is where you are on your own, since we can only support our services, tools and features that we provide to you as part of your package. Please understand that we cannot help each of our customers with site design issues.
   
   
4. World Wide Web: The World Wide Web (www) is composed of all the sites in the world, including yours. To use the World Wide Web, you have to use a browser (you are viewing this page right now with a browser), the most common ones being Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or the AOL browser.
   
   
5. FTP: FTP is short for File Transfer Protocol. This is the way you can transfer pages to the server from your computer and vice-versa. Often, the application you use to create your pages has a built-in FTP application. For example, Microsoft FrontPage has an FTP application built-in called the "publish" command. If not, we have some links in our FTP instructions that you can use to download a free FTP application.

To find out more, please read our general information about our systems & services.