Getting Started

What do I need?

To make your own website available to the internet, you will need:

• A computer with
• A connection to the Internet
• An account with an Internet service provider, eg AOL
• Your own domain name
• A hosting, ie space for your web site, on an internet server
• A means of writing HTML pages
• A means of uploading HTML pages to the server

Domain Names

Reasons for buying a domain name

• To advertise your business or organisation
• To make it easy to remember your address
• To create a good impression.
• As an investment
• To prevent somebody else using a name to your disadvantage.

Choice of domain names

You can make up any name you wish containing no more than 63 letters, numbers or dashes "-" but the first character must not be a dash. For example:

• www.inspiratech.co.uk is acceptable because the name, inspiratech, contains only letters
• www.inspira-tech.co.uk is acceptable because the name, inspira-tech, contains only letters and a dash
• www.inspira&tech.co.uk is unacceptable because the name, inspira&tech, contains an ampersand "&"

You have a choice of extension (see below), eg ".co.uk", to go with the name.

Before registering a domain name you need to check that the name with extension is not already registered. This site allows you to check registrations either for a single name and extension or "Globally" for several different extensions together, before making a purchase.

Our Domain Name Wizard will help you to find interesting names which are not already registered.

When hosted on our servers, you will be able to access the domain with or without the "www" in front of the domain name. For example, this site can be accessed by www.inspiratech.net or just inspiratech.net

Extensions available at Inspiratech

We offer the following extensions for name registration online:

• .com "Commercial"
• .net "Network"
• .org "Organisation"
• .eu "Europe"
• .co.uk "UK commercial"
• .net.uk "UK network*"
• .org.uk "UK organisation"
• .ltd.uk "UK private limited company*"
• .plc.uk "UK public limited company*"
• .ac.uk "UK academic*"
• .gov.uk "UK government*"
• .uk.com "Alternative UK commercial"
• .uk.net "Alternative UK network"
• .gb.com "Alternative UK commercial"
• .gb.net "Alternative UK network"
• .eu.com "European commercial"
• .cc "Cocos Island"
• .tv "Tuvalu"

* Restricted registration

We can register other extensions. Please enquire.

Our registration fees are for periods of two years, except for .com, .net, .org, .cc and .tv which are for 1 year. Please read the terms and conditions before purchasing.

The domain name will be registered in your name.

Domain name parking

We can park "store" your domain name at no cost until you are ready to use it. We can also provide a holding page with a brief message or we can forward it to free webspace provided by your Internet Service Provider. Please contact us at the time of purchase for these options.

Hosting

Set-up

Hostings are generally set up within 24 hours of receiving your order. When set up is complete, your user name, password, and FTP hostname will be sent to you by email. You will also be given a temporary URL to access the site prior to propagation of your domain name to all domain name servers. Propagation may take a day or two to complete. You can upload files to your site immediately.

Technical support

We provide technical support relating to the hosting by emailing support@inspiratech.co.uk. However, we cannot provide help with web site programming problems but we can provide a site design service.

Re-selling space

For business or small business hostings, you can sell space in sub-directories providing it remains within our policy guidelines. Additional domain names can be pointed at these sub directories, see below.

Additional domains

For business or small business hostings, you can register additional domains to mirror your site or to point to any sub directory. There is a set up charge for this service.

Hosting existing domain names

We can host any existing domain name, even if you did not register it through Inspiratech 2000 Ltd. You will need to ask the company that registered the domain name to change the domain name servers as follows.

For all our Windows 2000 & Linux hostings except the Linux Business hosting the domain name servers are:

For our Linux Business hosting the domain name servers are:

Changes to domain name servers usually take about 24 hours to become effective. Most companies do not charge for changing the domain name servers, but some do. Please check first.

Writing HTML Pages

An HTML editor or even a word-processor can be used to design HTML pages. HTML editors are often provided free with Computer or Internet magazines.

File Transfer

The HTML pages are transferred to the web server using a File Transfer Programme (FTP). One of the most popular is Cute FTP, which can be downloaded from GlobalSCAPE Inc for free trial and costs about £30 or €50 to purchase. Our servers provide FTP access 24-hours a day.