COP4813 Fall 2014 Assignment 1 - Web Hosting

Objectives

Demonstrate ability to create a web host

Learn how to register a domain and set up hosting

Supports Outcome 5

5 – Ability to deploy web based designs in a server environment.

Assignment

In this assignment you will set up a simple Hello World web page on a web host. For the assignment;

1. The web page must be on a web host and accessible through a registered domain name. I recommend using a name that is related to your name, this page is often used by students to get a job (demonstrating your abilities in interview).

2. The web page must include "Created by Your_Name" somewhere on the page.

3. The web page must come up as the default page when the URL is entered.

NO LATE SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT

note: If you look ahead to assignment 2 - you will see that you will be creating a full web site with multiple pages, so you have the option of doing this now and completing both assignments. You will also be using this site in most of the assignments in this class.

Your submission will be the URL of your web hosted site.

Information

If you plan on continuing in Web Systems software classes it is recommended that you select a web host that supports .NET and SQL Server. These are used in COP4709 (Database II) and COP4834 (Web Systems II). Some web hosts that support this are;

GoDaddy - The largest web hosting company and includes domain registration. You will need to be familiar with how to create hosting and setting up of sites on web hosting services.

Arvixe - A standard web hosting company, usually better prices than GoDaddy, but one of many.

Azure - This is the Microsoft Cloud Service. They support student accounts, though there have been difficulties getting them to understand this.

Amazon AWS - At some point you will need to learn how to use Amazon AWS, you can also use it as hosting for this class (it is free for 12 months)

You may not use any content management systems as your site. This means NO Wordpress, Wix, Joomla, or anything on the list located here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems 

I do encourage you to discuss your experience with different hosts and registries on the bulletin board. I also encourage you to try more than one hosting - you will be doing this for a living after graduation (and many of you are doing it now), so knowing the pros and cons of different hosts is important. I will give guidance, but it is your responsibility to research hosts and hosting.

Estimated Completion Time

Actual amount of time to register domain, create page, and upload is less than one hour. For some domain, the setup time once the domain is registered can be 24 hours, so I recommend you register your domain and set it up well in advance of the due date.

Supporting Lectures

Lecture - Setting Up Hosting

Questions and Answers

You will need this hosting to do all the other assignments. All assignments are turned in as links to the work that you have posted on a live site on the internet.

External Resources

Here is a nice little guide to setting up a web site. You should already know most of this information as it is basic, but it does contain good advice as to hosts and ways to do this - http://websitesetupguide.com/ 

If you have any good guides or other information that will be useful for helping students select registries and hosts, please post to the bulletin board. I may copy some of the info to this page.

Grading Criteria

An operational domain and page are worth full credit. You must have at a minimum, a Hello World web page set up on an external host and accessible via a URL to receive credit.

If you skip ahead to assignment 2 and have a fully functional page - that is fine, you'll have completed both assignments.