The Podium Network
For my final project of #dgst101 I chose to include something I have been working on recently and will be continuing to work on throughout the rest of the spring semester.This is my take at a niche social media platform and throughout its short life so far I have learned quite a bit about the internet as a whole.
When starting out building a website you must come across a domain that you like and one that is available. A common problem I found is that whenever I found a good, attractive, simple domain name it would either be taken already or for sale at an absurd rate of $95,000 a year (yes that is the quote I got from godaddy.com, I dont recommend using them). Upon this quote I learned that godaddy will actually track users search history on different domain platforms for frequently searched domain names and prices then they will buy the domains from different suppliers and upcharge them to the user that comes across wanting to buy it. In short, godaddy waits for an audience, buys a domain under them and then upcharges in hopes that the user buys and then makes a profit. I ended up going through google domains and finding one at a fair price of $12/yr and that was justifiable for me.
Many people dont have much experience when it comes to web development and will use third party services like Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress and many others that will create a baseline website for you that will host your website for you. This is where we get involved in to website hosting.
When hosting websites the user has many options and the one that I ended up going with is Amazon Web Services. Many people I know avoid to use any Amazon services for anything but I justify it by them being one of the best and most secure businesses for web hosting. Web hosting in short is just a remote computer that handles all of the processes going on throughout your website and linking all the data to the users upon request. You can easily build your own server to host a website but for my purposes a small server at about $3.5/mo works perfectly fine and if the website scales and gains more users then I will be able to upgrade to a better computer with the click of a button opposed to running to the hardware store to buy new computer components to upgrade the server I just spent $300 to build at home. Simple, right?
When planning out the basis for my site and the ideas I had behind it I took on a long search determining whether to use a third party company to build the front-end of the website but then that led to limited functionality and didn’t truly represent what I want my website to do and it wouldn’t be perfect.
Currently the website, thepodiumnetwork.com is at a running state on a third party site (with currently no users because it is very limited functionality), while I am working with family members and friends to build a function racing social network. This gives racers the ability to communicate with one another on a platform dedicated to their interests. There is a lot of money involved with racing globally so there is potential for profit and scalability, also not worrying about an audience.
Throughout this experience I have learned about the meaning of IP addresses, routing and even addressing remote computers. I have always known that the best way to learn new things is to take on a task you know nothing about. While I do know a little about this sort of stuff being a computer science major it was a learning experience when it comes to managing, planning and executing different tasks towards a simple goal. This experience so far has taught me more about how the internet really works and what it truly is. Luckily lining up the the start and basis of this class.
