Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

We all know intuitively that it has never been easier or cheaper to do “x” than it is today.  In fact, statements like that are boring and pedestrian to the point that you may already be considering moving on to the next article. What if I told you it’s possible to build a web site today for $0 in one weekend that would likely have cost over $100,000 and taken several months just three years ago?

After launching the web site Truemors, entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki posted a presentation titled “How I Built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail Social Media Site for $12,107.09.”  And he did so in 7.5 weeks. Closer to home, I received a RFP to build a web site for a local association on a Friday afternoon last year.  By Sunday morning I had the entire site built with nearly double the functionality that was included in the RFP.  These two anecdotes illustrate that it has never been easier or cheaper to build web sites, communicate, collaborate, reach out, or network.  In fact, almost all of the tools I’ll discuss in this article are FREE.

Domain Registration

The first step in leveraging these tools for your organization is not free, but it is very inexpensive.  In order to gain full leverage from many of these tools, it’s important that you own and control your own domain name.  Domain registrars can be found online and include services like GoDaddy, Register.com, and Network Solutions.  Depending upon the domain level type (i.e. com, net, org) the annual registration cost ranges between $10 and $15 per year.

Web Hosting

Next, you need to select a hosting service and it may or may not be through the same company that is your domain registrar.  Selecting a hosting provider should be done on the basis of a) the operating system you intend to use (i.e. Windows or Linux), b) any applications or frameworks you’ll be installing (e.g. WordPress, Drupal, DotNetNuke), and c) promotions that various companies may be running from time to time.  In most cases, you should not have to pay more than $4 to $8 dollars per month for shared hosting.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Free, open source web content management systems have obliterated most of the barriers to entry that have existed from the early days of the web until very recently.  I typically use the analogy of an “instant web site – just add water” to describe them.  In fact, many hosts offer one-click installations of these frameworks as part of their service offering.  Most CMSs share the following benefits:

• Ability to manage content without web or programming skills – no more relying on web masters to make changes.
• They are FREE.
• They are powerful, flexible, and scalable.

They also share most if not all of the following characteristics:

• Template (or skin) driven layout and design
• Group-based security and membership support
• Easily modified content
• Web standards upgrades
• Third party extensions

The most popular open source CMS systems are DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.  A comparison of these systems is beyond the scope of this article, but my take is that WordPress is the easiest to install and use, while the other three are more powerful and flexible with a longer learning curve.   Of the four, DotNetNuke is the only Windows-based CMS; the others are all LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP).

Google Apps

Google has a free service called Google Apps that provides a whole laundry list of FREE, powerful services including email, shared documents, shared calendar, shared contacts, web analytics, and more.  It’s quite easy to create an account and configure these services for your organization and they deliver powerful collaborative features.

Newsletters

Many organizations still send email newsletters to their customers or members using standard email.  This is dangerous for several reasons.  First, many of these home-made newsletters violate the Federal CAN-SPAM Act.  Second, if enough of these emails are sent you could be violating your Internet Service Provider’s terms of service.  In addition to these dangers, they also have several shortcomings compared to dedicated e-newsletter services like Vertical Response or Constant Contact, like the lack of advanced reporting and analytics or attractive HTML-format emails.  Plans start at $10 per month, but Vertical Response if FREE for non-profits.

Networking and Outreach

A full discussion of Social Networking is also outside of the scope of this article, but it bears mentioning.  Facebook recently introduced the “Fan Page” feature that is becoming more and more powerful as a tool for organizational outreach.  LinkedIn is a more professionally focused networking web site whose “Groups” feature is an effective means for connecting together groups of like-minded professionals.  There are many others that have their own virtues and vices associated with them, but they all have one thing in common; they are FREE.

How to Keep Up

The world is changing and although this article can get you started, the landscape is changing quickly an you will need tools to keep up on the latest trends.  Here are a few suggestions:

1.       Stay up to date by finding relevant blogs and reading them regularly, using an RSS reading tool to subscribe to news and blog feeds, and use social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

2.       Ask questions about current and emerging technologies.  Again, social networking sites are great for this particular approach.

3.       Spy on other organizations similar to yours.  What technologies are they using?  How are they leveraging social media?

4.       Network with others in your space.

5.       But DO NOT simply accept the status quo and keep following the same old plan.  Technology is always changing, so keep an ear to the ground and be a “heretic.”

Whatever you do, don't do this...

We’re Talking Techno-DIY

Leveraging these technologies is similar to a “do it yourself” project at home; you don’t need to be a plumber to replace a faucet, but you may not want to install a new sink yourself.  The trick is to find your comfort zone and ask for help when you’re outside of it.  The take-away from this article is that you should, at the very least, be aware of the vast array of low and NO cost technologies available to solve problems today and you should vigorously challenge the assumption that “more expensive is better.”

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A lot of confusion (understandably) exists about how domain, web, and email hosting works and what the difference is between them.  Most online services these days offer all of these services, so is it really necessary to understand the differences?  Just like there are carpenters who can do perform all aspects of a small project themselves (rough carpentry, painting, finish carpentry, flooring, etc…), you typically hire specialists when undertaking serious construction projects.  Similarly, many hosting providers have their own specializations and you can get the most for your money by selecting the services that best meet your needs.

In order to illustrate how these all work together, I’m going to describe the process of registering a domain to sell my new world-changing invention; the “widget,” of course.

Domain Registration

The first step in the process of setting up a domain is registration.  This is done through ICANN-accredited registrars, who collectively maintain the shared registration system (SRS).  There are over 500 companies that offer these services and some of the larger ones are Network Solutions, Go Daddy, and Register.com.  Quite simply, the registrars will let me know whether “JonsWidgets.com” is available and, if so, register it in my name.  As it turns out it is available, but this point all I’ve done is reserve the right to use a the domain name.

Domain registration process

DNS Hosting

Now that “JonsWidgets.com” is reserved, the next step is to get the domain listed in the “Internet phone book,” also known as the Domain Name Service (DNS).  When you’re browsing the Internet, domain names are a convenient way for humans to remember sites and email addresses.  However, we all know that computers only understand ones and zeros, so everything must eventually be translated into a number.  Every computer on the Internet (both browsers and servers) has what is known as an IP address – it’s a unique number that identifies that particular machine on the network and works very much like a telephone number.  Every time you type a domain name into your browser, the first thing your computer must do is to perform a DNS lookup to find the address of the server for which it’s looking.

How DNS lookups work

These days, nearly all of the domain registrars offer DNS hosting services.  As soon as you register a domain name, the registrar will typically create a DNS listing that points to a common page indicating that the domain is “parked” but that a web site doesn’t yet exist.

Web Hosting

OK, now it’s time to talk web hosting.  So far, all we’ve done is secured the domain name and pointed any browsers to a generic “Under Construction” type of page.  The first question is, “Who should I use as a web host?”  Selecting a web host should be the result of finding the best match between the requirements of your site and the hosting company.  This is largely dependent upon the technology  that will be used in developing your site.  Here are two main considerations:

• Environment: Linux vs. Windows
  Most hosting packages are offered in either Windows or Linux based hosting environments.  LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) is a commonly used collection of open source software that offers inexpensive web hosting.  Windows hosting is generally a combination of Windows Server, Internet Information Server, SQL Server and ASP.NET technologies that are more expensive to license and, therefore, generally cost a little more for hosting.
• Add-On Applications
  There is a growing list of applications that web hosting providers offer and in many cases they’re free!  Two of the more popular categories of add-ons are blogs and content management systems.  I’ll cover both of these in more detail in future posts, but these technologies make it incredibly easy (and cheap) to build powerful, professional looking web sites without anyone having to write a single line of computer code.  If you plan on using on of these for your site, it’s important to choose a provider that specializes in hosting that particular application.  The service and performance will typically surpass those of a provider that specializes in either something else or nothing else.

Email Hosting

Email hosting is similar to web hosting in the sense that it needn’t necessarily be hosted by either your registrar or web host providers.  This is another case of selecting the host that makes the most sense for your particular situation.  Using myself as an example, several of my domains’ email accounts are hosted by Google’s Gmail service.  This is configured by making a change to the DNS records for your domain.

Screenshot of the DNS control panel from one of my GoDaddy accounts

You can see that email routing is also controlled by entries in the DNS records.  This is how it is possible to direct different types of domain traffic to different servers.  In the screen shot above, in fact, you can see a few entries (called CNAMEs) that create sub-domains that direct traffic to completely different servers and/or services like email, calendar, shared documents, etc…

Conclusions

There are a couple of points to take away from this with regard to web and email hosting.  The first point is to understand that you are not beholden to the registrar of your domain to also host your web site or email.  The second point is that a web hosting provider should be chosen based on the requirements of your web site; not the other way around.  Finally, in many cases you can benefit from “best of breed” providers in the form of increased service for less money.

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