The first thing you need is a web domain, which will allow people to visit your site by typing in your business’s URI (Universal Resource Indicator). There are plenty of excellent hosting packages available online, and you should choose one based on the criteria that suit your business’s needs the best. Ensuring that you understand what your site is likely to need in the future is a good way to determine what type of hosting package you need now.
You might want to think about ensuring you have FTP capability for transferring files to the host—this is not entirely necessary, so wait until you have read the section entitled Transferring osCommerce to Your Live Site a little later on in this chapter. More often than not, you should be able to log on to your FTP account with your administrator’s username and password automatically. If you’re not sure what all this is about, then try the following URL in your browser (assuming your browser supports FTP):ftp://ftp...