Have Presence
Table of contents
Where Do You Live?
Our online life mirrors our real life in many ways. The once Vice-President Al Gore coined the phrase "Internet Superhighway," another connotation relating the etheral world online to the physical world in which we live. Since that time the "Superhighway" has evolved into a patchwork of superhighways, highways, tollroads, streets and back allies that circle the world. The question now is, "what presence do you have on the streets of our online world?"
- Do you wander homeless, scanning the sites and activities of others relying solely on public repository "PO Box" email addresses like gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail (Ymail) and others?
- Do you live in a flophouse like facebook, Twitter, Google+ where your shared "home" looks like everyone elses and you have no real rights... or respect, from the curators.
Make Your Self a Home
The first step to having a presence, of establishing yourself as a true online citizen, is to have a home you call your own, much like in the real world.
Creating your "home" space on the Internet is simply the act of acquiring a domain name. Acquiring a domain name is easy, and it can be fun too. It is actually very similar to obtaining custom license plates for your car. Getting a domain name though, is more an act of necessity to becoming an individual on the internet, capable of protecting your rights, than it is a frivolous exercise of decoration. A domain name is a way of becoming more than just a member of the herd, it is the cornerstone for building the home of your unique on-line identity.
Hosting Companies
There was a time when domain registries did just that, they provided a location for domains to be registered. They may have provided email services, but that would be the extent of it. Having recognized the emergence of a market of registrants without resources or knowledge to host their own applications under the domain name once purchased, most registry services now provide these capabilities as "hosting services."
| Method | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SiteGround | service | A broad service offering of services at a discounted rate of $3.95 a month for the first year and $9.99 a month every year thereafter. |
| eHosts | service | A broad service offering at a $2.75 monthly rate for the first 3 years with a 3 year contract and $5.50 every year thereafter. There are other initial term pricing options for 1 & 2 year plans. The storage is considered "unlimted." There is additional cost for dedicated IP and SSL certificates. |
| HostGator | service | HostGator is a full service hosting company with services ranging from shared hosting to full dedicated servers. Pricing starts at $5.75 a month for the initial term. |
| BlueHost | service | BlueHost is a full service hosting company providing services ranging from domain registration to Virtual Private Server provisioning. They have a wide range of both Open Source and pay applications that are easy to install. $3.95 monthly first term rates. $6.99 regular monthly rates. |
What Exactly is a Domain Name?
In simplest terms, a domain name is a directory entry. All computers are assigned an Internet Protocol (IP) address that is 4 sets of number separated by periods. The IP address is used to uniquely identify computers on a network. A domain name is a human readable string of "words," computers read from right to left, that creates a categorized hiearchy of names making it easy for us to remember a computer reference.
Is it easier for you to remember 72.21.194.212, or that computer's "Amazon.com" domain name, when you want to do some shopping? The "com" portion of the name is called the "top level domain" and defines the type of domain to it's left. Well, it used to define the type of domain when there were 7 fairly tighty controlled "top level" domains. Today there is still an effort for domains to be categorical, but it's basically a hodge-podge. The "com" domain used to be strictly for "commercial" domains, "edu" was for educational institutions, basically universities, "gov" was for government entities and so it went for the other 4 as well. Today most domains are just lumped into the "com" domain even though several more top level domains have been added to aid in categorization.
The combination of the top level domain and the word to the left of it, refered to simply as the "domain" is very important. That combination of characters defines who is receiving, responsible for and has full control over your data.
Cost of a Domain
Domains have direct and indirect costs associated with them. It's difficult to say exactly how much a domain costs, it's like trying to tell someone how much a car costs. The answer is, "what brand, model features are you looking for?" For the purposes of this explanation we will pick perceived average costs based on experience (as opposed to the average costs tabulated from extensive research). Many hosting companies have reduced introductory offerings of up to a year or offer at domain names at no cost or as part of a package.
Total cost of ownership is going to hover around 20 bucks. Lower costs are out there to be found and you can certainly drive the costs upward, but overall it is less than dinner out once a month and certainly lower than other services common to most households, like the cable or phone bill.
| Feature | Avg CostAverage cost broken down monthly | FreePossibly a zero cost item depending on selected company. | DiscountCommon introductory discount | When Needed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Registration | $2.00 | yesThe first domain is sometimes free when paired with a hosting plan. | rarely | Always | |
| Domain PrivacyAll domains need to have the registrant information made public. This opens them up to discovery by spammers. Activating this feature will display "alternate" placeholder information publically. | $1.00 | no | no | Best for personal sites | |
| Hosting Plan | $10.00 | no | 50% | Whenever information like pictures, weBlogs, etc... are to be shared on computers maintained by the host company. | |
| Dedicated IP | $3.00 | yes | rarely | When conducting commerce or using SSL (see below) | |
| SSL"Secure Socket Layer" is a technical term for additional technology that encrypts data transferred between a server and the browser. When you see "https:" in the address bar, that site is suing SSL. | $3.00 | yes | no | When accepting logins When secure data transfer is needed |
|
| Monthly Total | $19.00 |
Specific Domain Benefits
As eluded to earlier, creating a domain is esssentially "claiming your space" on the Internet, but what really does having a domain do for you? Why would you want that space?
- Identity
- Unless you're a circuit-head that uses IP addresses directly, you will use a domain name to interact on the internet. The combination of top level domain and the domain specified to it's left are the primary identifer for the data recipient. This means when someone sends an email to JohnHaglesnort73251 at gmail.com the email is being sent to gmail with the intent of being delivered to a detail at Google named JohnHaglesnort73251. Alternatively, If John was able to secure "Haglesnort.org" as a domain name, email (and other communication he set up) woud go to an identity that truly represented him, John at Haglesnort.org.
- Flexibility
- Ever tried to get an email address like John at gmail.com, or Mary at gmail.com, or Frank at gmail.com or Abigail at gmail.com? Your chances of gettng an email address like that are about the same as buying the first Ford Model "T" produced. By owning his own domain our Mr. Haglesnort not only can have his "John@Haglesnort.org," email address, he has the ability to create whatever other ones make sense. For example John can keep his main email box exclusive to those he only really wants to have it, like his friends and his family, by creating other email boxes for other types of interaction more likely to generate spam. Creating a "GenDel@Haglesnort.org" (General Delivery) email address for use with on-line sign-ups and other on-line forms for example. There are a number of other ways to flexibly use a domain discussed throughout this site.
- Privacy
- Any time a person sends data, any kind of information, to a domain other than their own that information is subject to the ethical nature, the trustworthiness, of the recipient. You can think of it along the same lines as money. You store money at a bank because you trust them to keep track of it and keep it safe. You know they have a common vested interest in doing so. You don't store your money with anyone you don't completely trust. The money you have at home is the money you feel is the least likely to be abused (household relationship issues aside), and in the same way the data you keep at your home domain is going to be the data least likely to be spied on, used in ways you don't intend, or just generally abused.
- Security
- The great central data repositories of the early 21st century are under attack. They are continuously under attack, in the truest sense of the words, by adversaries looking to gain access to the wealth of information they store. The prestige of being able to claim having hacked in is a pretty attractive motivator as well. Storing your information at your own location, behind your own domain takes your information out of the crosshairs of these assailants. Think of it this way, if there was a bar of gold laying in the middle of the sidewalk and a quarter laying off to the side, which would you make the effort to go after? There are those that would say risk is heightened by storing data as an individual because most people don't have the skills to keep their information safe. Our answer is as straightforward as the premis on which it is based, just KISS (Keep It Simple Silly). The great central data repositories are staffed with amazing security skills, but they are also immensely complex environments that require those skills. Again, in the physical world the more complex the facility, the more valuable it's contents the more complex and in depth the security. How much security do you have on your home in comparison? The same common sense view applies to securing your domain, KISS your domain and keep it safe.