Level 2: Building Your Digital Engine

Level 2 is all about purchasing (if needed), building, and setting up your website The Digital Engine way to become an inbound lead generator. However, before we jump into the topical step-by-step instructions on how to build your website that exist in this chapter, it is important that you actually know what you will be purchasing and the difference between Domain Registration and Web Hosting. When you purchase a website domain, like CNN.com, you are actually leasing an internet address or an “IP Address.” IP addresses are a long series of numbers that access a specific place on the Internet, but instead of people typing in IP Addresses (e.g. 192.162.1.122), people who want to visit your website will type in the name associated with this address (e.g. ESPN.com) rather than the IP Address numbers. What you may not realize is that you do not actually own a domain. Domain URLs (like ESPN.com) are all leased through ICANN, the “Internet Corporation of Names and Numbers.” In fact, what you will be purchasing is a lease on the name. All domains are leased for a year to multiple years at a time. Therefore, when you pick out your website name (e.g. ReagleTheBeagle.com), you will be leasing this for one year or a number of years from ICANN. All companies, like The Digital Engine or GoDaddy, through whom you register your domain name, pay the same fee to ICANN for the domain registration process. Again, your “Domain” is just the name of your website’s numerical address, which is where it is located on the Internet. 

Alternatively, web hosting is an account on a computer (aka server) that stores and serves website files via the Internet. Consider this metaphor: If the domain was a home address, then web hosting is the “country” where you website lives (or is “hosted”). To manage a website, like you will do in this class, you need both a domain AND web hosting to operate it. Unlike paying for a year or years of domain leasing, web hosting is paid in monthly increments. There are different types of web-hosting, which equate to more or less room on a server, as well as faster or slower servers to deliver content at different speeds. Right now, as you build (or potentially rebuild) your website from the ground up, a super fast server is not needed. Therefore, in this class, we offer the most basic web hosting service at the lowest cost to get Secondary and Higher Ed students started. However, if you are currently a Continuing Ed participant or if someday when Secondary and Higher Ed students possibly have millions of users on the website, you would need to upgrade your web hosting account to handle all of the user traffic on the website.

In the chapters and topical pages associated with Level 2, all of the instruction sets in these assignments will help you set up your WordPress website, social media channels, and email marketing services. Once you have the purchase process complete (if needed), the next set of directions will help you get your website set up and mechanically running correctly. When this level is complete, you will have a fully functional website that is all yours! Congrats! This purchase process will take you less than an hour, but the mechanical setup of the website will take 6-8 hours, which implies there is a LOT of important information here to make sure your website is properly setup for inbound lead generation.