Owning a website in the virtual real estate allows a business, organization or individual to reach their target audience, to talk to innumerable people, to market product globally or made ones voice heard. To create a website, there are two essential steps to be taken.

First is to get a domain name. This is like a house address in the real world. One must have it so that others can reach you. This in most cases is similar to the name of a business. For example, if it is a bank, then the website address would be nameofthebank.com. It is important to purchase the domain name from a domain name registrar.

The second step is to upload data, information and services on your website or portal. This is done by a Web Hosting provider, the virtual real estate agent or company. They allocate you with a virtual space, provide email facility, high degree of firewall protection, and furnish the website with high speed connectivity and shopping cart software in some cases. The virtual space is rented on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. There are two key operating platforms on which the website can be hosted – Windows and Linux. The Window operating system uses the ASP language while Linux uses Perl and PHP.

Free Web hosting is also a possibility; however, it is not advisable for businesses due to poor connectivity, limited bandwidth and site access.

There is also an option of sharing the virtual real estate which is called Shared Hosting. This means that you share your domain space with others. The Web Host provider gives the same IP address to more than one company. The problem related with this system is the risk to security and low speeds. Many search engines sieve out websites which share their domain with others.

Most businesses prefer a dedicated Web Hosting. This is not only safe and fast, but also enables them to expand operations and create appropriate backup. For individual who are hosting website, shared web hosting could be recommended.

Recent times have seen an increase in Video Web Hosting. As the name states, this service allows users to upload video. The uploading of video is enabled by placing software in the server which allows the website to put video content. Businesses which have great bandwidth and capacity to store huge data, venture into Video Web Hosting. It is forecasted that Video Websites will soon replace blogging and content based websites.

With each waking day, the virtual world sees a new concept, idea or technology discovered. The trend is moving more toward visuals rather than text. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video would be worth much more. Today an event in one corner of the world, when viewed on the internet, draws reaction from people around the world within a matter of minutes. This is a very powerful tool and new baby in the hand of mankind. How they nurture it is yet to be seen.