Once you have finished building you site it needs to be uploaded to a server on the internet. A server is a computer located somewhere on the Internet. It is owned by a service provider or a host.

By uploading your site you are saving your site to space allocated to you by your host. The site sitting on the server is called your remote site. You get your space by purchasing it off the host by paying an establishment fee then a monthly charge (usually paid annually). The cost of hosting is very reasonable, although the cheaper it is can mean more people use the host and you may have quality problems.

This site is hosted by Web City. Have a look at their site to get some idea of costs.

To get your site there you need special software that accesses the remote site, using a log-in name and a password, then uploads (or puts) to your allocated space. The most common software is called FTP software. Some programs, such as Dreamweaver have it built in. FTP software can be downloaded, for free from the internet.

Examples of FTP software include:

• CuteFTP
• SmartFTP
• Cyberduck (Macintosh)

Getting your Web Address and a Remote Site

Before people can access your remote site you need to register a Domain Name. This is also called your web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

It is probably easiest to get your domain name when signing up with your host for the first time.

You can have a .COM, .ORG or .COM.AU (if you have an ABN and a business name that sounds similar to what your domain name to be)

When you register the provider searches to internet to see if anyone else has the domain name you select. If no-one else has it it's yours!

After you pay for your registration and establishment fee, using your credit card details you will be sent registration details by email and instructions on how to set up your site.

It takes a couple of days for your domain name to be fully registered.

The Host will tell you what folder you need to save your sites into, usually public_html and give you a password. You need to put these details into your FTP software.

Once this is set up, using the FTP software, log-on to your host and press the Upload or Put button to transfer your site from your computer to the Host.

Once the transfer (or upload) is complete you can type in the web address you have been given and see your site.

Getting found by Google

It takes a couple of weeks for your site to be found by search engines, such as Google. They have robots that search the whole of the internet for words in your web site. If people are looking for your site, through links from other sites you will be found quicker and be listed higher up the page. You can also insert metatags in the head of your HTML if you know how to do it.

The best way to get found is to have as many other web sites have links to your page as you can.

Google gives some advice on how to improve your search chances at:

• http://www.google.com/webmasters/
• http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/submit_content.html