House of Flowering Plants? That is why one should choose easily remembered or recognized Web addresses. Since thousands of second level domains have already been taken, it may be easier to find what names are available and then choose the name of the business from the available choices. To find out if a particular com, org, or net second level domain name has been registered, go to Internic (www.internic.com ). If you decide not to register your own domain name you can have a listing under someone else's domain. This can happen in one of three ways: as a third or higher level domain name, as a subdirectory on a domain, or as a user account on a domain name. Typically smaller business with less money to spend on Web housing will opt for one of these three choices. Many surfers will believe that a company that does not have it's own domain name to be cheap and small time. Examples of being listed under someone else's domain name can look like this: www.hostcompany.com/~yourcompany, www.yourcompany.hostcompany.com, and www.hostcompany.com/yourcompany. Now that you have decided on what type of Web address you will have, you must decide where the files that make up your Web page will be stored. Again there are several choices. The most common method is to pay someone else who has computers connected to the Internet to host your Web pages on one of their computers. The second and third methods involve purchasing equipment. In the first of these two choices you buy a computer and have it housed at a business that is connected to the Internet. In this arrangement you have total control of the Web site and the computer on which the files are hosted. The last and most expensive options is to have a dedicated Internet connection run to your business and install the servers needed to not only host the Web page but also manage many other operations that must take place in order to run your own Internet connection. Only large companies or individual...
