Hi, This seems like a very basic question, but I've tried googling this and for the life of me cannot find a page that has it written in plain English! I'm probably just not using very good search terms, so I apologize for that. I'm quite familiar with web *development*, but I know squat about web hosting. I'm looking for somewhere to host a photography web site that will have roughly 100 images to start out with, but will grow over time. It will need PHP (with the GD library of image functions) and MySQL. Here are my questions: 1.) What's the difference between registering a domain name and hosting a site? Based on what I've read, these are two totally different things that can be done with different services. 2.) Are there services (perhaps GoDaddy) that do both registering domain names and the actual hosting? 3.) How will I know if the host I choose to go with has the PHP GD libraries enabled? If they have them disabled, is it likely that they would enable them if I asked them to? 4.) How much control over MySQL do most hosts allow? For instance, if I chose to delete a field, or add one, or add a table, or anything like that, would I have to contact them for each change and have them do it or would I have full access to this? 5.) I don't *really* need to know the answer to this, but I noticed that GoDaddy offers 10 MySQL databases. Out of curiosity, why would anybody want that many? I apologize for my lack of knowledge. I'm trying to learn more about web hosting, so please bear with me. Thanks for understanding.

1.) What's the difference between registering a domain name and hosting a site? Based on what I've read, these are two totally different things that can be done with different services. Registering a domain name is purchasing a domain name, such as chrismr.com You can host it anyplace you want to. I host my own web site at my house on a Win 2k3 server. To host means to where you files sit. There are a number of companies that can host your site. 3) normally a web hosting site will list what services they support and use. 4) you normally have full access and control over your material Hope this helps you out.

I'll add on to what chrismr stated: You do not actually buy domain names, you are really only leasing them. If you do not renew a domain name then it becomes available for someone else to use. Once you have registered a domain name you are free to use it for a web site, FTP site, email, etc. But, all you have done is register the name for your use. It does not mean those services are included with the domain name registration. So, if you want to set up a website you need to have a web-server (i.e. a PC running web server software). You can set up a web-server at home, but you will usually have to pay more and be responsible for keeping the machine updated. It can be a fun learning experience, but if you don't want all the hassle go with a hosting company. In fact you can break up the hosting such as have email hosting in one place, FTP hosting in another, and web hosting in another. You can even have those split up in different places But, usually it's easier to go with one company. Now, you might be wondering how you can break up the hosting. Well, there is a 3rd component which was not mentioned. DNS hosting. You also need to have a record for your domain name on a DNS server. This tells all the other DNS servers in the world (and they tell all the other computers) how to connect to your "sites". The DNS record will have an entry for every "site" you have and the corresponding IP address, something like: www.mydomain.com: 123.123.123.123 mydomain.com: 123.123.123.123 ftp.mydomain.com: 69.69.69.69 smtp.mydomain.com: 77.77.77.77 Take a close look at the first two entries. You've probably navigated to many sites by using just the domain and sometimes with www preceeding it. This does not happen by default, they must set up the records to point to the same place. 2) Many hosts to both registration and hosting. But, be careful becasue some of the cheaper places will "supply" you a free domain. They will actually register the domain to themselves and include it as part of your hosting. but, if you ever wanted to move hosting, you can't, because the domain is registered to them, not you. 5) There are many reasons you could use multiple databases. You could be running multiple domains on your hosting acoc--t or even multiple sub-domains with very different content on each. For example, you might have www.mydomain.com for your business, but you could use myname.mydomain.com for your personal webspace. It would make sense to keep the data separate. Michael J

Thanks for the replies! That's exactly what I was looking for--some straight answers. Thank you very much!