Creating a web site doesn't really start with some kind of HTML editor. It starts with getting the domain name and hooking that up to place that will house the site pages.
My goal was to learn every aspect, so I started by taking some basic HTML pages, put them on a computer I setup for that purpose at home, then set out on the domain name part of things. I went into it fairly naive, but what I considered tech savvy. I knew the IP address for my systems at home and I already had my router configured to send web traffic to the right machine. I was able to verify a lot of this between home and work by tools such as tracert, ping, and telnet.
So, I figured I had my credit card to get a domain name and the IP address to point it at. I should be done in 5 or 10 minutes, then just needed to wait a day or so for the propagation of this information through the internet. The following week was a rather rude awakening.
Getting a domain name is as simple as plopping your credit card number into netsol.com or godaddy.com or another registrar. With a last name like mawhirter, getting mawhirter.com wasn't difficult. But, what the site wanted me to enter was a set of name servers, not an IP address like I had. What the heck is a name server and what does it take to configure and use one? Well, it's a special type of server on the internet that has all the information about how route traffic for a domain. This is what lets you do things like have several computers hosting different parts of your domain, configure email either in conjunction with or separate from your web site.
After some hunting around, I found some free name servers. In particular, zoneedit.com. Once I got through all the configuration here is what I have for DNS information there:
; <<>> DiG 9.3.1 <<>> @ns14.zoneedit.com mawhirter.com. axfr
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN SOA ns14.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1063118149 14400 7200 950400 7200
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN NS ns14.zoneedit.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN NS ns18.zoneedit.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 0 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 10 ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 10 ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.com.
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN MX 15 www.mawhirter.com.
testing.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
restore.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
mail.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
www.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
habitat.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
googlea99f2f2606088ae1.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN CNAME google.com.
sunriseumc.mawhirter.com. 7200 IN A 75.71.49.136
mawhirter.com. 7200 IN SOA ns14.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1063118149 14400 7200 950400 7200
Once I got all that figured out and in place, my name servers for netsol.com are simply ns14.zoneedit.com and ns18.zoneedit.com. Why didn't I just do that at the beginning. :)