The ultimate goal of your website/web content is to get it on the world wide web so people can see it and use it.
To get my site up and running, I used a web hosting company called "Hostroute" and paid around £15 for a years hosting for a small site on there server and they also provided me with my Web Domain name and my own email adress. Web hosting companies generally will provide you with the whole package required to get your site up and runnning and generally at little cost.
So here I will detail some basic background info to help you get your sites going.
A web browser, like "Internet Explorer" or "Firefox", is a peice of software of which it's purpose is to retrive information, process it, and then make it viewable by users and also to allow them to then navigate through this information.
A web browser will read your web content and then render it from it's "Marked Up" form into an interactive document for the user.
Web servers are basically big computers that store files for web sites and deliver there content to users via a web browser. The company's that run web servers offer "Web Hosting" services for people who want to set up there own web sites, they will then rent space on there servers to them.
Each web server is alloacted an "IP" or "Internet Protocol" adress that then tells computers where to find it within the network. An IP adress is a set of numbers and would look something like; 120:12:54:4372 etc..
A Web host, along with there IP adresss, will give you a "URL" or "Universal Resource Locator" id that is technically known as a "URI" or " Uniforn Resource Identifier", in english that means your "www.simpleeggdesign.com" adress. This will be your unique adress on there server.
Your own computer will also have an IP adress that is given to you by your "Internet Service Provider" or "ISP".
When you enter an adress into your web browser your IP adress will look for the IP adress of the website you are searching for i.e "www.simpleeggdesign.com", the information will be retreived from that particular server and the information will be sent back to your adress.
Your web host will offer domain names via the "DNS" or "Domain name system", which predominently offer the .com, .net and .org domains along with country specific domain names i.e. .co.uk etc. Within these domains you can then choose your own domain name i.e. simpleeggdesign.
You may have to compromise on your web name/adress dependent on what web domin names are currently available. Your web host will be able to tell you straight away if a name is available on the register or not.
As well as renting space from Web Hosting companies like "Hostroute" and "Go Daddy" for example, your broadband provider may also offer you some space to host a web site as part of your service and at no additional cost, so if your having a play around why dont you get in touch with them to find out. If so you will be provided with information and the adress of where you can upload your site to. You wont be able to obtain your own domain name as part of this service.
Firstly always ensure that your home page is called index.html (lowecase) as your site will not work without this.
Generally the most common way to upload your files to your web server is via an "ftp" or "file transfer protocol". There are many free ftp programs that are easily downloadable from the web. A good free ftp I have used is "Filezilla" for example. If you type "Free ftp client" into your web browser you will be given a whole list of programs available to download. Of course there are many ftp's that you will pay for and is always worth doing a bit of research on the best programs available to you.
Your web host/broadband provider will provide you with some information that you will need to enter into a dialog box in your ftp, these are the host ftp name, url (universal resourse locator) adress, and your log in and username. Once you have logged in you can then transfer your files.
You will be given two windows showing your local files once you have located them, and the remote window where you need to transfer your files too. Generally your web host will provide you with a folder called public_html of which to transfer your files too.
If your lucky enough to have a WYSIWYG web editor like Adobe Dreamweaver, then you can simply upload your web pages to your web server directly from your editor by entering the information as detailed above.
You may also be able to upload your pages via the control panel on your web hosting account so may be worth checking out before dowloading an ftp program.