Top 10 Website Providers

ICANN's Big List of Registrars for Domain Registrations

What is a Domain Name Registrar

This is the one I am most familiar with, the one I use, done here for example;
www.godaddy.com

You start with searching for a domain name that is not registered which can become your own.

It will tell you if available or not. You will be presented with possible near name alternates, some at high price, but what you want to do is filter the results by price and put $25 as max.  You can get some domains as cheap as $3 but those are odd endings like trollberg.info or sweething.biz  You probably want to stick with com, net, or org for domain name endings. 

Once you have a domain name, you can then open a Hosting Account.
Your best bet is the Deluxe, which gives you unlimited webpages, storage, and bandwidth at a great price.

Once you have your own domain name, and a hosting account, you can use FTP to interact with it. You can use an standalone FTP program, or use Windows Explorer to do so, where it's like having the space right on your computer's drive, except needing to use internet to access the files.   You will use a profile name and a password to access the hosting account.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/file-transfer-protocol-ftp-frequently-asked-questions

In my case, I use Mint Linux 17's File Manager to interact with my FTP account at Godaddy.

I can create html pages, upload them for display, available from a front page, or only by direct link.  I can have hidden folders with files stored in them but not accessible by anyone but me, or only by a direct link to a file in the folder, such as the image link immediately above. I have a lot of items in that CNET folder, in postings across these CNET forums, but only if you have the direct link to the file, which was shared in other posts at CNET.

It's like having your own personal little "cloud".  You can build, upload and publish webpages, store files, link to files and images when in forums, get some free email accounts in your domain name, which are POP capable, or using an webmail interface.

This is what the backside for an account looks like.

You have a choice between Windows Servers and Linux Servers, you can use either. My advice is the Linux servers unless you intend to do a lot of .ASP (active server pages).  Linux servers I believe to be more stable, hacked less, safer, and consequently are usually less cost per month. You can interface through both Linux and Windows servers using FTP.

You can do private registration which adds about $10 more per year, but means your IP registration information such as home phone and address isn't exposed on an Whois search. 

So, a domain name for $3 to $20, a monthly hosting charge of about $5, private registration for $10-15 means a yearly cost of $70-95 and able to do almost anything you want. Most sites like godaddy also offer free software that can be used like Wordpress, Joomla, Forum Software, Calendar, Online picture albums, and more.

If you get all that with your sugarsync account per year, then it's a fair price. If not, then you know a better way to do it.



http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7588_102-633814/sugarsync/?messageId=5645401