This page was designed to help our customers to better understand some essential points in the scope of services Total Knowledge offers. Some of these are web services so we think it is necessary to start with the very basics, which are the Internet and World Wide Web.

The Internet is a global network of different devices, primarily computers, which was invented and created for pure communication purposes. Initially it was military order for scientists to come up with a communication technology which may survive severe loses of hardware and physical lines. Existed at that time telephone network could not serve this purpose, because any break in the middle of the chain makes addressee unaccessible. Telephone works like a train until tracks are here. So the idea was to use phone lines the same way as streets and addresses a postman uses: he may bring a letter to the certain address using any possible route. Basically it should work like this: end user has a device (computer) with some kind of physical address, a number called IP address (Internet Protocol address), shortly it is a Internet terminal. A message formed on this terminal goes through another one and gets coded so it may be sent through telephone line to a 'router'. Router is another device, which contains 'routing tables'. Using these tables router determines where the message addressee is and sends it further through one of available lines. Routers develop a network, so if the first choice line is not available the message is sent to the second one and so forth. So sooner or later the message will reach the addressee if any one out of thousands possible routes available.
More about the Internet read at: The New Hacker's Dictionary (Jargon File), version 4.3.3, 20 SEP 2002.
Generally speaking, the Jargon File. is a very interesting and educational reading

WWW or World Wide Web was invented by Dr. Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist from CERN (the physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland) and introduced to the community in 1991. It was meant to be a web of texts stored on computers joined through the Internet. So it is important to distinguish between Internet and WWW, which in casual language mix up. If we extent the analogy for Internet as a communication system like streets and building numbers the World Wide Web is more like people and businesses, which may move from one residence to another but stay the same. Initially the idea of the WWW was supposed to help scientists all over the world to join their research capabilities, to ease referencing, archiving, search for necessary documents, articles and other materials. Generally speaking WWW implements a very specific idea, which is 'hypertext', a text which may be read in all directions. On the Web this very feature works via 'links'. A link is a small fraction of a text with underlaid, invisible code. The code usually contains a Web address where the reader would be directed if clicked on the link. The address is said above IP address, normally represented by some name. So there is another idea incorporated in World Wide Web: Domain Name System (DNS). This is a system of names organized like a library catalog. DNS protocol ties domain names to IP addresses, which makes using of Internet/WWW human friendly. Initially DNS was invented for the Internet.
So a single page of a hypertext within the WWW or a web page is an electronic file stored on a server. One or more web pages linked to each other under certain Web address or URL (Uniform Resource Location) define a web site. They say the server, where your site files are stored is your host and respective service is hosting.
There is more about World Wide Web at: Wikipedia

In order to decide what do you want to have on the Web you must make it clear for yourself:
1. What web may bring to you or your business,
2. What kind of web site you may have and
3. How to get the site you need

Now, let's go through these questions.
1. Any site you may have, potentially brings you world wide exposure. Any person having Internet access may search anything over the World Wide Web and encounter your site the same way like going along a street watching and meeting people and businesses. In this respect you may perform, as a creator, an artist, a writer, just a person who wants to tell something to everybody around the Globe. In terms of business advertisement, even a simplest web site brings you incredible opportunities for a fraction of cost in regular media.
2. A simple presentation site may be filled with your writings, drawings, pictures, links, any data you consider worth to be exposed.
   However a simple presentation site is not the only kind of site you may have. You may put on the web a functional site, which may do something for your business. The most popular web functionality nowadays is E-Commerce, which stands for Electronic Commerce.
   That is your site may:
   • Display / describe products and services you offer and contain tools to search for these
   • Take an order
   • Accept a payment
   • Conduct other related activities
   E-commerce site brings definite advantages into a business.
3. To get a site you need:
   • To get a domain name, which will serve you like individual or business name, but within DNS.
     In order to get this you need to register it with one of licensed registrars and find a domain host, a server (actually a business maintaining a server) to keep your domain record so that it may be found in DNS. Domain host actually may help you with domain registration. There are about two dozens of registrars who bought out some space for millions of potential domains from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which keeps records of top domains (com, net, org, edu, tv, cc, etc.)
   • Having a domain name you want to prepare a set of files which will physically represent your web site, to store them on a web server (web host) and link these files (web pages) to your domain name. Domain name record and web pages may be hosted on different computers, but it is much more convenient if both are managed by the same entity.