What is a Domain Name?

Alpha Omega Design works with a lot of clients that need websites or have websites and domain names. Most people have heard the term “Domain Name” before but, we thought we would actually explain what it is and how it works. In order for us to truly understand what it is we must understand the humble beginnings of the internet. Originally websites on the internet we located with numbers called IP addresses and they still are today but, these numbers were hard to remember. You may have seen an IP address before and it looks something like this, 192.168.1.45, or similar. The XXX.XXX.XX.XX structure is common for IPV4 Address addresses. In response to this problem the Domain Name Service or System (DNS) was created. This system allows the IP address for a website to be translated into an alphanumeric string ie. www.somesite.com. When you start to create a business or ministry this is something that you should consider during the naming phase of your business or ministry. Since domain names are words, two websites cannot have the same domain name. Alpha Omega Design can help you with the domain name searching process if you need it. Once you purchase a domain name it may take some time before you are able to access that domain name due to a process called replication. During this process the worldwide database that comprises the DNS (Domain Name System) is populated with the IP address and the appropriate name that points to it. If a domain name has a lapse in payment to the domain name provider and the domain name is suspended or “parked”, once the domain name provider reinstates the domain it will take some time before the domain name will be accessible throughout the internet. Once your domain replicates everyone will be able to enjoy your great website.

If you have a question about your domain or getting a domain let us know what it is and we will try our best to answer it for you.

Thanks and God Bless!

What is the “Cloud?”

What is the “Cloud” or “Cloud Computing?”

This question is asked by millions of Americans daily. All of us in the technology industry throw these terms around like our audience is supposed to know what this means because it is the latest and greatest workflow for IT. I have been guilty of this myself and within our company when talking to clients. I can sometimes tell that when I say things like “We can setup a server in the cloud to serve your website images.”, that my client has no clue what I am talking about and thus I explain. Other times the client may have a good poker face and not reveal their confusion to me. Either way I want to start out by apologizing to all of you that have experienced this with Alpha Omega Design or another company. So lets jump right in…

There are three main points in understanding what the cloud is and I am going to talk about them here.

The “Cloud” is not some unknown, far off place where data (Internet content) goes to live in a special world. The cloud is data centers, and lots of them. One of the main ideas behind the “Cloud” is that data can be stored in multiple (Redundant) locations and be accessible in multiple other locations. These “Clouds” can more efficiently store and deliver your content to the services you love. Some services that you probably already use that utilize cloud technologies are Apple, Google, Amazon, Roku, Netflix, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, and Alpha Omega Design.
The “Cloud” is not only data centers but, it is also made up of compute, storage, and networking infrastructure. To you the average person this may not mean a lot but, it greatly affects those services that you love to use. By it’s very architecture the “Cloud” is more efficient at doing the tasks that typical infrastructure handles. For example, lets says that everyone is tweeting #AODesign in response to an Award that our company has won. All of the tweets cause our website traffic to triple or quadruple. Our site starts to become unreachable because of all of the traffic coming to it. Instead of starting up another computer (“Server Instance” to us Nerds) to split the load, if we are utilizing the cloud, it scales up the computers automatically based on preset traffic guidelines. Now that’s cool! It’s better for you and it’s better for us. This same principles applies to storage, computations, applications, and many other tasks that are handled by the “Cloud.”
The “Cloud” is a safe place. In recent years there have been some breaches in specific applications that are cloud based but, these breaches were not a result of the architecture of the cloud but, of the applications. Just like any other web based service available, cloud services are as safe as the security policies of the companies that provide them. As with any product you should do your part as the consumer and ask questions about the service either to the service provider themselves or other people that have used the service. There is one thing to keep in mind is that things on the internet should always be assumed as public. If you don’t not want things you place on the internet to become public, don’t upload them to the internet.

I hope that this brief overview of the mysterious “Cloud” will help you to understand on a basic level what the cloud is. In future blogs we will discuss how the cloud works in more detail. Alpha Omega Design uses a mixture of Cloud based and standard services to provide for the needs of our clients. If you are thinking about utilizing a cloud service either personally or for your ministry or business we would love to talk to you. You can leave us a comment below and we will respond as soon as possible.