Domain name Hosting.

I need to get the conceptions concepts straight. Analogy to real estate will be excessively used for comprehension purpose.

 Definitions

- IP address: The piece of "internet land" you are assigned, rented for use along with the domain name tied to that IP address through the domain name registrar(s).
- Domain name: the name of the land/place
- Domain Name System: A direction-information booth. You give the domain name and get transfered/redirected/led to the corresponding IP address.
- Domain name Registrars: Middlemen who are accredited to rent out the "land", working under a big landlord known as ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
- Web hosting: Displaying certain items on your land. Requires constant uptime of a server, usage of said server requires a fee (or free in the case of some ISPs)
- Web host: A server. I don't know how this work. Does the content just "float on the internet" by itself? Or for every site there is on the internet, is there a machine running constantly to keep it up because information must be sent from the server every time a request for such information is made by a client?
- DNS server: A server that hosts a Domain Name System.

In order for a website to be running, I need to:

 Spoiler

- Have an IP address to put it on
- Have a domain name to refer to it
- Add the domain name into the Domain Name System(s) used by the end-users when connecting to my site
- Have a server constantly responding to requests for data from the site

Is that correct?

In order to meet those criteria, I need to:

- Have an IP address to put it on // - Buy/Rent an IP address (how?)
- Have a domain name to refer to it // - Buy/Rent a domain name (possibly here http://www.godaddy.com/)
- Add the domain name into the Domain Name System(s) used by the end-users when connecting to my site // - Add... what? How?
- Have a server constantly responding to requests for data from the site // - Contact my ISP and talk to them about it.

Much thanks, Southperry.

Domains are absolutely not required to run a website. You could run a server without a domain name. To use a real estate analogy:

Without a domain name: "Excuse me sir, I need to go to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC 20500."
With a domain name: "Excuse me sir, I need to go to the White House."

A domain name is a name and nothing more. You could get to the right place just by telling people the address (or for a website - the IP address). But having a domain name makes your website more recognizable to people.

Without a domain name: "Excuse me DNS, I need to go to 64.79.210.58"
With a domain name: 'Excuse me DNS, I need to go to southperry.net"

Both will take you to the same place.

A webhost is a place from which you buy a server from. They give you a slot on a server and an IP address. You buy a name from a DNS registrar (godaddy and namecheap are popular). Then you tell the DNS server where you want your name to point - what IP address. Then when people type in "example.com" they'll go to your site.

When people connect to your site, they will default to port 80 which is the HTTP standard. So on the webserver there has to be a program (on Linux it's often called a daemon) that listens on port 80. The program then spits out HTML pages for the client to view.

You never need to call your ISP to set up a server. Period.

Also, it's, "I'm trying to get my concepts straight."

A webhost is a place from which you buy a server from. They give you a slot on a server and an IP address. You buy a name from a DNS registrar (godaddy and namecheap are popular). Then you tell the DNS server where you want your name to point - what IP address. Then when people type in "example.com" they'll go to your site.

That's pretty neat-o. IP address and web server from one single place.

One thing though, when I tell "The DNS" where to point to when given the name example.com, am I adding example.com to something universal (which means I do it once, everybody can connect to it) or do I have to work with multiple DNS servers for my own good (which means I have to visit most, if not all the information booths to let them know that example.com now refers to my site at 45.68.143.72, so that clients who visit those booths will be directed to my site?)

You only tell the one place where you bought your domain from where to point. That DNS registrar will then inform all of the other DNS registrars where your name points to. The delay between the new address being put into effect and the old one lingering (because not all registrars will have all the same information at the same time) is called propogation. Typical propogation is between 24 - 36 hours. Though I have seen some take as fast as 5 - 15 minutes. It all depends on what web traffic is like.

c

You also can create a web server on your network in a public zone and have something like Dynamic DNS link the IP and port of your web server to a defined address in case you don't want to go with traditional web hosting. Just make sure you have adequate bandwidth. It's not the same as having your own .com, .net, .org, etc. but does work fairly well for the thrifty minded.