Devious Fish
Web Design

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Introduction to Internet Terminology

Getting a web site running requires two pieces: design and hosting. Web design is akin to graphic layout in the print world, whereas hosting is equivalent to the mass-printing and distribution.

A web designer takes your requirements and builds a web site. This is similar to creating a series of documents with a word processor, each one corresponding to a different page of the web site.

When you create a document with a word processor, it does not appear on the Internet. Neither do documents created by the web designer.

For a document to be available on a web site, it needs to be published on a web server– a computer in a data center dedicated to publishing web pages. A host is a less formal name for a server, and so the term hosting came about.

Web servers respond to a particular domain name– that's the name of your web site, such as DeviousFish.com. The server in the datacenter is assigned the domain (or several domains) which it responds to on demand.

Let's walk through this process, using my site as an example:

1. I purchased the domain name DeviousFish.com.
2. I created the documents for the Devious Fish web site.
3. I set up hosting for DeviousFish.com with DreamHost, a company that specializes in hosting/web serving.
4. When the site was ready for publication, I uploaded (copied over the Internet) the Devious Fish documents onto the hosting machine/web server.
5. The web server now waits all day, listening to the Internet for requests.
6. When you type in "http://DeviousFish.com" into your navigation bar (or click on a link to this web site), your machine asks the Internet for DeviousFish.com. It gets a connection to the hosting machine/web server. 1 
7. Your machine asks the hosting machine/web server for a particular page. The web server finds the document and sends a copy back to the calling machine.
8. The web server goes back to listening for requests.
9. Your machine displays the page it received.

That's all there is to it, at least for web pages that are static (that aren't interactive except for hyperlinks).

eCommerce

"eCommerce", short for "electronic commerce", refers to operating an Internet-based store.

A "Payment Processor" is an agent, such as PayPal™ or Google™ Checkout, that processes payments by taking money from a buyer's account (a credit card or checking account most often) and transferring it to the seller's account (such as a checking account). Payment processors charge a fee (the "margin") to perform this service.

Some payment processors, such as PayPal™, work with multiple currencies and perform conversions if necessary to complete a transaction.

Content Management Systems

When a web site is dynamic (it changes in response to knowing who a user is, or their logging in, etc.) then the whole picture above becomes more complex. Most of the complexity grows around step 7, which instead goes something like this:

7. Your machine asks the hosting machine/web server for a particular page. Instead of simply returning a pre-written page, the server runs some software to generate one. The software analyses what you're trying to do and how to respond. Once it knows how to respond, it accesses some template documents to learn how to format the response. It issues database queries to determine what exact information it should include with the respone. The software fills in the template with the query response, and finally sends the finished document back to your machine.

The additional complexity on the hosting machine/web server requires that it be set up with the same software the designer used, and that databases be properly installed and populated. Even if the projects uses open source (free) software, installing software and configuring databases is necessary– and not free.

To complicate things, there are numerous content management systems available. Data or programs from one can not simply be moved to another.

Thus, while content management systems are very powerful, they come with a price– once set up, they are difficult and expensive to change. You will be restricted to web designers who are familiar with a particular system.

Do content management systems have a purpose? Absolutely. They can, to a degree, allow you to update your site without a web designer. You could add products or post articles to a blog or journal, for example, if those capabilities were part of the original design. For web sites that don't need these capabilities, however, a content management system imposes many unneeded headaches and restrictions.